Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

Just as I was writing that last bit up, one of the front desk clerks came up to us and said their general manager heard about our situation and is lowering our rate to $99/night.

@hystericempress, you were right about this town. <3

Yeah.

We're safe in Atlanta, but shellshocked as hell. Turns out we blundered into town right during ComicCon, and while were very lucky to find a room at all, it's a lot more than we expected and Peg's understandably stressed about it.

The forecasts are not looking good. Even if somehow the levees do hold, despite the low spots and the notorious ineptitude of the local water board and Army Corps, there's still a real good chance the rains will hit our porch level.

We stand a very real chance of losing absolutely everything. That includes books that belongs to Peg's mom, most of my plushies, years of my correspondence with lost friends, what little of my game collection was ever returned from Transliminal...

I dunno. I got nothin'. All I can see in my mind's eye is walking home and Peg breaking down as we confirm that it's all been inundated.

Supposedly heading out in 30-45 minutes. This is Greyhound, so I will not trust that estimate until we're on a moving bus, and then I will still not trust it. I'm still half-braced to get to Atlanta and then get killed by some asshole mugger, because my "faith" in Murphy's law has never been higher.

Still. I'm glad we're getting out of here and have some hope there will be a here to come back to on Tuesdayish.

Love y'all. I can't promise everything will be okay, but I promise I'm willing to do goddamn near anything, some real Breaking Bad shit, in order to keep Peggy safe. The rest is basically up to the weather gods—who I am not unwilling to bribe, flatter, and/or threaten at this point. >_<

@kelseyhusky @anthracite You're the best, huskers. 😻​😽​

Respected local meteorologist is hopeful...

http://bobbreck.blogspot.com/2019/07/recon-found-center.html?m=1

This the first good news we've seen in a while. Maybe all your assorted orbital interventions are doing some good. Damn, it's good to know transcendi got your back. 😻​

The PA system at the Amtrak station is playing a dreadful easy-listening version of "Didn't We Almost Have It All."

On behalf of Peggy and me: fuuuuuuuuck you.

@acetone_kitten It's been real. <3

Nah, seriously, our odds of survival are currently... probably no worse than they are in any other day. Assuming we get rolling OK in 2.5 hours, our biggest risk is being on a Greyhound and/or Atlanta. :p

Our stuff, on the other hand, well, we'll see.

@001zlnv @anthracite Ooh, I missed that one! I think I was too young for that to have any "special" meaning when it was originally airing...

@Austin_Dern @jakebe "It's a trick question. I've never worked with a person named Jerry."</April>

@001zlnv @anthracite Yeah, fuck that guy. >_<

"Hey, kids, you know what's really behind all that global ecological collapse?"

"Um... is it rapacious corporations like yours, and the mandate of capitalism to ignore every factor except for economic growth, Uncle Ted?"

"Haha, no, of course not! IT'S COLORFUL SUPERVILLAINS. Now come here and let me tell you a wonderful story of calculated neo-liberal diversity..."

"Neat-o! Will there be easy answers and zero character development?"

"You bet!"

@Austin_Dern In the moral sense, I intend to be as wet as possible. :) Decent bar will be one of my main criteria for picking a hotel, I think. :)

@Austin_Dern @jakebe (HINT: The answer is always Li'l Sebastian.)

Heh. One of the minor pissers about all this... dammit, Barry was one of my favorite TV shows. It's gonna be all WEIRD after this. It'd be like going through your Katrina and the Waves CDs in 2006. :p

@kelseyhusky @anthracite Yeah, if you could pick Barry up and shake the bastard around a bit until it lets go of us, we'd be ever so grateful. ;) <3

@001zlnv @anthracite I mean, personally, I'm perfectly content to just hole up in a hotel and stress-eat Chinese food until things blow over, but I... kinda understand if that does not suit Peg's plans. :)

My desire to see all our stuff survive still tops out my desire to see every swaggering toxic asshole making light of this on r/NewOrleans drown, but the gap is closing even faster than that between the river height forecast and the levees.

Eeyup, we're bailing.

It's been an adventure already. I packed up the plushie family in plastic bags, gave them a tearful farewell, and put them on top of the closet a good 9' off the ground. (Except for my "kids" Measle, Poori, Solace, Stevie, and Zoya. who you'd better believe are coming with me.)

Then we asked around to see if any of Peg's friends are leaving. Nope, they're all battening down. Then we called the car rental places. Nothing left. Then we headed to the Amtrak station. Nothing until tomorrow, NOT EXACTLY HELPFUL.

Luckily, the Greyhound station is in the same building, and they had ONE scheduled bus that wasn't heading right into the storm path. So I guess in about five hours, we're on our way to a non-consensual vacation in Atlanta. Probably 4–5 days if all goes well...

We're going because the worst-case scenarios are REAL BAD and I don't wanna put Peg through that, not even a tiny risk. Like I said, nobody else is evacuating, and this is an overabundance of caution. And it turns out the levees are at least a little taller in our neighborhood than the Doom Prophets on Reddit were claiming.

Still. There's a non-zero chance we're gonna pretty much lose everything, if the levees fail and the city floods. I'm dealing with it better than I expected, but... yeah. It's a thing. I'll stay in touch as best I can, and I'm glad that if all goes well it looks like we won't have to be here if/when it happens.

@hystericempress Yeah, that was really just a "one more damn thing," honestly.

Actually... we are bailing, and we're gonna end up in your hometown as it turns out! It's basically the only place we could get a ticket to...

Yup, it's looking pretty bad down here. Power is already flickering a bit. We've got a tornado warning on top of everything else. Looks like this thing might pass right next to us.

Roads are probably a bit too deep to make that last-minute grocery run I was hoping for. We already have 8-12 days of food bars—I was just hoping to get something more interesting.

Local Reddit is dealing with this through gallows humor and I... I kinda wanna punch them? Lots of people saying "we're all doomed!" but nobody's exactly rushing to evacuate—I haven't seen a single person say they're gonna try.

Calmer heads are saying something more like "as long as the levies don't actually *breach* and the pumps hold up, we should be fine, even if there's some spillover."

The local meteorologists and government agencies are basically still saying "stay the fuck indoors, make your preparations, and don't panic." I'm going with that for now—in fact, I'm probably going back to bed in a couple of hours.

Have already told my boss I'm probably taking PTO for the rest of the week, so at least that's one less thing to worry about.

Wish us luck. FWIW, I consulted Dawn (i.e. Peg's tarot deck) about this, and her basic opinion was "yeah, I probably scared you with that last reading*, but you're smart and you're paying attention, so you've probably got this."

(*Death, a 99 of Swords, and a 7 of Swords, plus an unnerving amount of water imagery... The funny thing is, this is BEFORE Invest 92L started forming. I had just asked her about the comic's future. :O )

Also, been looking at historical precedent. Even in Katrina, there was like a 0.4% chance of dying—and the last time the levies were breached before that, in May 1849, only Uptown and the Central Business District got flooded. (We're in Mid-City. Too close for comfort, but...) And that was before there were such things as drainage pumps.

Anyhow. We'll try not to do anything stupid, and hopefully I'll still be around on Monday to make your lives bitier for years to come. :)

@hystericempress Hope you feel better soon, sis. Keep us posted. This sounds like a rough one. DON'T YOU DARE PULL A FUCKING HENSON ON US. You start to get super-weak, you see a doctor, okay?