I'm Leaving

I'm leaving later tonight. More importantly my brother has decided to leave too. He lives on the Westbank, the area the they're predicting to get hit the hardest. He was planning on trying to ride it out. Katrina dumped a foot or so of water in his house and even though he knows there's nothing he can do to prevent more water in his house he wanted to be there, but he's decided that he needs to leave.

This is the first time that I'm actually bringing things with me. For Katrina I brought a couple change of clothes and that was it. Back than we all thought we'd be gone for a day or two and than back home. How many times had it been that way? Too many that made us complacent. I remember while I was up at my Aunts in Tennessee and watching the news. They made it sound like Slidell, the city where I live was wiped out. I honestly thought I was going home to, well, to no home. Luckily I had very little damage. But while I was thinking this my thoughts went to some of the things I would have lost. Not the computer, the tv, the stero...all that can be replaced. But what about my pictures from Alaska? From Europe? My friends that I haven't seen in years, but back when we inseparable? So this time I decided, even thought my area isn't supposed to get hit that bad, but who knows, that I'm going to take some things with me.

But what do I take? All my pictures of course? That goes without saying. My Jazz Fest posters. All my concert posters that represent a certain concert, a certain time for me. But what else?

As anyone that reads this blog knows, I'm a huge pack rat and collect lots of books and comics and records and cds. One good thing with my Ipod is that I've transfered a lot of music to it, just over 12,000 songs so far. But it still isn't everything. I still have cds to transfer, vinyl records I want to put on it. I was just getting to put the Minutemen's "Double Nickles on the Dime" on my Ipod and now I don't have the time. I'm actually putting some cds on it now, the cds load a lot quicker.

But what about my collection of Harlan Ellison? His books are out of print now and I have everything he's written, some books dating back to the sixties.

What about my comic strip collections? "Terry and the Pirates," "Popeye," "Krazy Kat"...do I leave without them?

Most of my books can be replaced so I'm not as worried, but there is just so much that I can probably never find again. It's taken me a lifetime of collecting to amass some of these books, so how do I leave them behind.

My car only holds so much, and I have to leave room for me and Buffy.

I know these questions don't matter as far as people's lives, but they're hard to answer, the decisions of what to take and what not to take pull me in so many directions.

Whatever I decide I have to be done with it in a few hours. My brother plans on meeting me at my house and than we're going to try and head up to Moms in Tennessee. Some of the highways are already bumper to bumper but we plan on traveling some of the smaller roads to get us there.

Hopefully I'll be back sometime next week and things will be ok with everyone.