My good friend Leif lost his home during Gustav

He was renting, so he moved and things are better now, but it was an incredibly harrowing situation that he describes here. Though many of the afteraffects of Gustav still linger, most of them are wrapped up now. The only persistent sign of hurricane that most of us see is that there is a massive pile of yard trash stacked in front of almost every yard in town. There's so much of it that it's taking the city weeks and weeks to clean it all up . . .

I "toured" the old house with Leif a week and a half ago. Massively scary to think my man and his wonderful girlfriend, R, had to sit through all that wind and rain in a house that literally fell apart around them during the event. Their new house is very nice, though, and I hope it proves to be a foundation of further bliss.