Catching up...

It's easy to get out of the habit of posting to the blog. I guess it would be easier if something really interesting was happening or if we had a camera that worked.

Jeff continues to be super busy with school. Reading, writing, teaching...plus he just got called to be the Elder's Quorum President in our ward here. A lady in our ward who's also going to graduate school summed up the life of a PhD student best, "If I were to read all day, only taking a break to shower and eat, I would still never finish all the reading they assign."

I continue to look for a job. The pickins are pretty slim around here. For the time being I'll have to get something outside my field with minimum pay, but even that has proved difficult. Several people have told me that in Hattiesburg you should just be grateful to get a job--no matter what it is. The trouble I'm facing now for the few jobs that are available is that I'm overqualified. I've had to tweak my resume and cover letters considerably. I guess the key will be convincing people that they should hire me though I'm sure they'll suspect I'll leave when something better comes along.

The good news is that I've had some extra time and have made some huge break throughs in genealogy. However, I realized I was getting the job search and the search for Baptist missionary ancestors in India mixed up when Jeff found the following error on a cover letter:

Ms. X X
University of Southern Missionary

It's a good thing he caught that one!

A few highlights from the past few weeks:

Having my mom and dad visit us. Jeff had so much homework that I took them down to the Gulfport/Biloxi area (to the Gulf Coast) for a little sightseeing. Truthfully, there was not much to see but a whole lot of hurricane damage. They are still trying to rebuild from Katrina. It's amazing--entire hotels reduced to nothing. Then it happened to be stake conference weekend, but they were good sports to come to all our meetings with us. I loved having them here! Thanks Mom and Dad for going to a conference in Memphis and for driving five hours+++ to come see us!

Going to a wild animal orphanage in Collins where they adopt animals that people have taken on as pets and then realize after the fact that it wasn't such a good idea. They also take animals that state-funded zoos can no longer care for. This place was surreal. I was scared for my life. You could get within about three feet of the animal cages--lions, cougars, leopards, tigers etc. There were other animals as well, but the cats were the most unsettling. Again, we were the only ones there, and I jumped about three feet into the air when from behind us there was a raucous "HELLO!" It turned out to just be the parrots behind us, but I was sure that one of the big cats had started talking and was coming to get us. There's something unsettling about being that close to wild beasts in homemade cages. You can see every detail of their faces, know that they are looking right at you. Their menacing expressions seemed to be directed to us personally. Jeff convinced the owner to let him pet the burmese python. I opted out when she asked, "Do you have the scent of food on your hands?" and "He can sense your fear!" when the snake recoiled at Jeff's touch.

Jeff went to Houma (Home-uh), Louisiana, this weekend to help with hurricane cleanup efforts as part of a service project between Martin Luther King III and the LDS church. It didn't make the news that much, but Houma was the place when Gustav made landfall. He spent the day clearing out trees and nailing tarps to roofs.

Guess that's all for now!

A word about photos...

I apologize to all that we have not included any photos in our posts as of late. Sadly, our digital camera has been taken over by demons. Also, Verizon does not have digital services here in Hattiesburg, so we apparently cannot access our camera pics either. It may be awhile before we get a new camera because a couch for the living room has first priority (well, after paying the rent and other bills of course) once I get a job.

All is safe and well in Hattiesburg

Just wanted to let everyone know that we're doing fine. We, along with most everyone in town, stayed inside almost all day yesterday, and the roads were near empty. We had some heavy rain and bouts of whistling wind pretty much all day/all evening (and it still continues) and the sky looks pretty ominous, but not even close to what they were showing on TV. They say we only got 3-5 inches in our area. We had tornado warnings throughout a good part of the day, and that was kind of unsettling to hear the sirens going off in the distance and coming from the TV periodically. There were some power outages, but our lights never went out.

Everyone in town pretty much breathed a collective sigh of relief. Gustav, at least for our area, was NOT a repeat of Katrina. I guess the worst that happened to us is that we were bored being cooped up all day long. The scene was reminiscent of the children's book, "The Cat in the Hat" --a boy and a girl staring gloomily out the window with the narrator reading in the background--“The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house all that cold, cold, wet day.”

As I mentioned before, there are lots of refugees from down south staying in town, and the governor has told everyone to stay put until Wednesday. I'm sure there will be some damage and flooding for some when they return home. School remains closed today, which is probably a good thing, since a lot of local students with family near the coast traveled with their families to evacuate to other states etc.

The general feeling down here is that the media only thinks that Katrina affected New Orleans, when in fact many other places took a direct hit. I noticed yesterday as we watched the news that that was still the case (though understandable). It's been a bit difficult to sort out what's actually true coming from the media or if things are being exaggerated in order to get a news story. This morning I read on the local newspaper's website that there were "gaping holes where fists of air punched through" many billboards in town, when in fact, that was done beforehand as a preventative measure to keep the signs from catching the wind and toppling over.

Well, there go the tornado warning bells again...

Thanks for all your prayers and thoughts.