Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

Um, now the gauge is back down to 17' and all of us on /r/NewOrleans are confused as hell.

Oh, BIZARRE. Never mind, the most recent forecast revises them right back up to 19'. What. The. Ever. Living. Fuck. Is. Going. On.

Yeah, anything could happen, I guess. Still optimistic, since we were originally facing down a 20'!

Huh. What the ever-living miraclefuck. They have revised the storm surge forecast from 19' back down to 17'. We're still dealing with a chaotic system and, I mean, NOLA is still probably getting smacked with a fucking hurricane.

But. If this new forecast holds up, that DRASTICALLY reduces the risk of the levees failing, which is the main thing we were panicking over. Still a chance of some property damage and/or flooding, but total doom and loss is a lot less likely now.

I personally credit all the friends who fired their various orbital cannons at this thing. (<3 @Momentrabbit and @kelseyhusky especially...)

@JulieSqveakaroo @LeDiva @mawr @anthracite It's just her rye sense of humor.

@dodec @hystericempress @anthracite Yup, this morning we ended up at "The Food Shoppe" downtown, which turns out to be run by a NOLA expat. Fleurs de lis all over the place, and I had a hell of a bowl of Voodoo chicken mac and cheese—and a wild cherry Fanta, holy fuck, maybe it's road fatigue and gratitude to be alive, but I didn't expect it to be so good. Really nice folks, too. We are doing okay for now, and I think my current forecast is something like:

(80%): We come home and things are fine and we hug each other a lot.
(15%): We come home and there's a bit of property damage and we muck out and move on.
(5%): Ah, yes, I remember New Orleans. It was the Before Times, before the Great Waters came. Let me tell you a story...

OK, @hystericempress, you're right, this town is fuckin' rad. Had two amazing meals, everyone's been super friendly, and even the sketchy street folk have largely just wanted to ask Peg about her tattoos and stuff. :) Saying we're from NOLA has gotten us a huge amount of sympathy and good wishes, too.

The most danger we are *currently* in is from breakfast, which was probably about 980% of my saturated fat RDA. Worth it.

Both the forecasts and the moods from home are fairly hopeful. The Army Corps is at least claiming they don't anticipate any major levee issues, and they seem to be armed for bear flood-wise. The local weather veterans aren't leaving town and aren't especially advising anyone else to—one even has a hunch Barry's gonna spin westward and dump everything on Baton Rough, which can handle it much better than NOLA could. Even the snarkmonsters on r/NewOrleans are mostly just posting jokes about beer and gators. :)

Anything could still happen, and I am a firm believer in Murphy's Law—having been screwed by the 1-in-100 chance before—but I'm MUCH less frightened than I was.

I mentioned on Reddit, during a thread where I was defending the Army Corps from accusation of dishonesty, that I have a bit of experience with geographical datasets from work and could real easily see how a discrepancy in their own levee records could be totally innocent.

Someone bombarded me with very polite, fretful technical questions about their house's FEMA flood measurements. I explained that, oops, I'm not a real geologist! I just have to fuck with WGS84, GCJ02, and BD09 [basically different plots of the earth's surface] occasionally when our maps contradict China's.

And then I spent most of an hour researching the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 for them, until I felt like I had a safe grasp of what they were talking about, and explained to them that yes, their calculations were probably fine (with appropriate "I am geographical grunt labor, do *not* base your life on this!" disclaimers).

I feel so smart right now. :D

@JulieSqveakaroo @Thaminga Sextuple, actually, but I've got ADHD so it's fine. For me it was Tuesday. ;)

@JulieSqveakaroo @Thaminga Yeah. Um, I'll drop ya a DM about it later. It was bad, bad enough that I really should have cut them off then and there for good, but... I'm a sucker for a false sign of penitence, and I really thought I could nudge future-them onto a better path. Well, that failed good and hard...

@Leucrotta @anthracite Oh, wait, you just mean closed at the moment, not closed-closed? We'll be here for four days at the least, we might still be able to check it out!

@Leucrotta @anthracite Peg might still need some help, but I am kinda looking at an embarrassment of riches here: there are like 8 Indian and/or seafood places that deliver to this hotel. :D

@Thaminga Yeah. I gave them a chance because I thought it might be a situation where still having a friend could be good for them, and... I dunno, the Kel part fooled me into thinking there was something more there, and they were SO gaslighty about none of this really being their fault and being so confused about why Everybody Was So Mean To Them... I can't believe my toxin scanners failed so badly. >_<

@chandra Thanks, hun.

I just had to block ANOTHER of the fucking "Pnictogen Collective," aka Alyx, Chara, Kara, Kel, Monophylos, etc., who apparently either did not read or did not understand that bit I posted about how when a tigress tells you to fuck off, you fuck off.

I do not need this shit in the middle of this evacuation. I'm already shit-scared about Peg. And I would normally never air this publicly, but it sounds like this... uh... collective is a repeat offender in this matter, and I want to compare notes. Please let me know if they've tried to use their plurality as an excuse to evade a block with you, too.

@JulieSqveakaroo The locals are NOT helping with all their talk of doom, and of the utter incompetence of the local water board and engineering corps. Granted, they have real good precedent for those opinions, but the net effect feels like "old men in a grubby bar trying to outdo each other for ego points," and they're NOT helping one bit.

I'm still putting some shred of faith in the current 19' river forecast and the assurances of the Army Corps. Based on current rain estimates, if there's minimal spillover past the levies, we might still actually be A-OK. The predicted rainfall is like 18 inches, and our porch is like three feet off the ground...

@Austin_Dern @Phorm Yeah, to be fair, I HAVE gotten to do a lot of cool stuff in RL that, fleeting or not, has been kind of an unfair privilege... Usually, I'm pretty philosophical about it, but yeah, reserves are a bit low for some reason. :D

I got to be sealed in an honest-to-goodness vacuum bed ONCE, and then the owners decided they didn't like it and it was quietly whisked away. *shrug* And while I never had one of stegosaurus's (sp?) Anubis gas masks, I did have the kitty one, and I did in fact get to wear it to a Catgirl Goth Rave before *that* friendship also exploded. I... um... maybe I shouldn't complain. It was kind of awkward, but yet, kind of amazing. n_n;;

@Phorm Stabbings might be a little strong for _most_ of the whole saga, except right up at the end there. But I don't have the mental fortitude left to censor myself right now: my ex-housemates deserve some kind of Lucy Van Pelt trophy for last-minute ball retractions. And they had the fucking nerve to wonder why I was sullen and temperamental all the time. Mysterious how that all cleared up within a month of me moving out with Peggy.

That's okay. I've still had an interesting life. I'm still glad it all happened, and I wouldn't trade meeting you nor anyone else. Not *even* them. Beats hell out of any timeline where I stayed a Christian and/or never got out of Ohio.

@Phorm Me, either. I could write a book.

Oh, wait, I am. It's been real therapeutic so far.

#FriendshipIsBollocks

I keep making references today to the worst and 2nd-worst timelines...

Just for reference, in the best timeline, I'm at a hotel where I can spend the day like this...

Oh well. I got it once. It was wonderful. It was everything I'd hoped for. I wondered at that moment if it would be promptly yanked away from me, by the usual suspects. Naturally, I was absolutely right.

@LexYeen@snouts.online Yeah, Rik read up once on people who believe in weather-control weaponry based on Tesla's work, so I have a *real* vivid mental image of what these fuckers must sound like.

*sigh* We live in the 2nd-worst timeline. (The worst is the one where Peg and I couldn't get outta Dodge yesterday, which came distressingly close to happening...)