There's a Hurricane a Comin'

Friends and family have encouraged me to write about our experiences since Katrina came to visit. It has been most of a year, and I think I can finally start.
We chose to stay in New Orleans for the storm. When we had everything ready and could leave if we wanted to, the roads were in a gridlock. Nick, our tenant, had tried to leave, but the powers that be would not let him go West, only North. Of course, his parents lived west, so he came back to the house. We all decided our brick house would be safer than stuck in our cars on the freeway. We moved ropes, life jackets, and a hatchet upstairs, in case it flooded. But our home was 6 feet above sea level, so we weren't really worried.
A friend of Nick and John, Mike, showed up before supper. He wanted to stay at our place, since his father had gotten up in the middle of the night and left him. Of course he was welcomed.
We rotissiered a chicken and had a great meal with a nice bottle of wine. The guys went upstairs to their apartment and watch "WaterWorld". Such a sense of humor.
Phone calls from family in California saying we should leave, but not us! The rain started about 8pm Sunday evening. A bit after midnight the wind began to blow. At 5am all the transformers in the neighborhood blew up, one after the other, and we were without electicity.
The noise of the wind was tremendous, but I had been in wind this strong before, when we lived in Boulder, CO and had shanook wind from the north. The rain was another thing. It was coming sideways in sheets. I put towels in the window seals as it was blowing under them! I raised all the blinds and pulled the curtains up to the side, so they wouldn't get wet. This was a wise move for later on, too. Little did we know the meaning of WET.