Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

​i ate a very large amt of sausage gravy this morning and am v v v pleased about this

@001zlnv @anthracite More like a pancake printer, honestly, but it's still kinda funny. :D Wait, I have a phone now! I will see if I can get you some footage tomorrow morning.

Haven't gone for a full update, but it does look like the lower river forecast last night was the correct one, and in terms of the levees, we are probably well outta the woods.

Still a LOT OF FUCKING RAIN, but last Peg checked we were one of the lucky spots that still had power, Barry is veering in a course that ain't _too_ awful for us, and we have a porch that's much taller than the max 25" scenario.

At the very least, I can look forward to seeing my plushie friends again and giving them a massive apology/heroes' commendation...

@mawr It's 2019 ffs. Medium purists can lick my neural jack. :) If it goes into your brain and it's words, you "read" the novel for all reasonable intents and purposes.

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...