b.rox

According to Google, no one links to Friends of New Orleans, and that seems kinda weird.

Eleven Months Post-Katrina on Vimeo Also on YouTube. This video seems a little disjointed to me, but hopefully you can connect the dots: We personally are OK, but as a city we are not OK, and we’re trying to make it better in any little way we can.

Today Xy and I hosted a baby shower for one of our new neighbors. She and most of the guests are Honduran. It might seem ironic, hosting a baby shower, given what happened Wednesday, but actually Xy offered to host the event before she even knew she was pregnant. The event itself was interesting. It’s [...]

I haven’t seen our new neighbor Ashley since I talked to him a couple weeks ago. But I met another young African-American man living in that same building, right across the street from us. His name is Damien. He was hanging out on the sidewalk on our side of the street with Ovi, a young [...]

On the one hand, it’s been good for me, not having internet at home since the flood. It’s been good for my tendonitis. Typing and clicking all day at work and all night at home isn’t good. Confining my internet access to the office has helped control my online habit. On the other hand, I’m [...]

I spent today catching up, running errands that fell between the cracks over the last two days. It’s amazing how many things we’re juggling, and you don’t notice until something breaks the rhythm. But the real excitement of the day is that Coleman came with his plumbing crew and essentially re-plumbed our entire house. Out [...]

I’ve been trying to get my head around what happened. The timeline looks like this: Xy and I started Officially Trying in early May. She might have conceived in mid-to-late June. She did the home pregnancy test last Friday, and upon seeing the positive result, got an appointment to see our Ob/Gyn Wednesday at 2 [...]

Sometime around 2:30 or so this morning, I was awoken from my deep and blissful slumber by a cry from Xy. She was crumpled on the floor of the kitchen. She was feverish and felt like she was going to faint. A little bit later, she did faint. Earlier, while I was still asleep, she [...]

This is the most utterly outrageous thing I’ve read in a while: FEMA does not allow the media to speak alone to residents in their trailers. “If a resident invites the media to the trailer, they have to be escorted by a FEMA representative who sits in on the interview,” Rodi said. “That’s just a [...]

I hope everyone who cares about New Orleans will join us for the Rising Tide Conference.

…it’s another. We thought our roof was properly patched up, but judging from water damage to the kitchen ceiling after recent storms — it’s not.

There was only one Q movie on my alphabetical list: Quest for Fire (1982). If I had time for research I suspect I’d discover some serious philosophical issues with this film, but all the same I was deeply impressed by the ambition and imagination at work here. The dawn of humanity is a fascinating topic, [...]

While we were attending a workshop on restoring windows at the Preservation Resource Center this morning, Xy went to the bathroom and discovered she was bleeding. My first thought was that she’s not pregnant after all, that her period just came late, and that yesterday’s test was wrong. But I understand that false positives are [...]

The eighth article about our renovation appeared in the Times-Picayune this morning.

Xy did a pregnancy test this morning, and it read positive. She say she doesn’t believe it. I think she’s just shocked into denial. I’m inclined to believe. I guess maybe we’re not shooting blanks after all. Cue transitional music…

On August 23rd of last year, one week before Katrina, I started a letter to the CEO of Aetna (my insurer through my employer). I’m preoccupied with other matters now, so I doubt I’ll ever complete this letter, much less send it. An open letter to Dr. John W. Rowe, Chief Executive Officer of Aetna [...]

In the days following the failure of our flood control system, I was overwhelmed with a mix of emotions: rage, anxiety, despair, grief, determination, and shame. As time has gone on these emotions continue to resurface, and I see them reflected in my fellow New Orleanians and, to a lesser extent, our fellow Americans. Rage. [...]

Imagine walking into a party full of people you’ve never met, but whom you know more or less intimately because they’ve been pouring their hearts out into their writing. That’s what the Geek Dinner was like. Although there were some programmers and other geeky types there, this event was dominated by bloggers. And as we [...]

Somebody put banners up on the blighted grocery at Carrollton and Claiborne last night: Walgreens has held the lease on this property for seven years. They haven’t done anything in that time to deal with this festering eyesore. I don’t know who put up the banners, but kudos to them. They are obviously trying to [...]

Today was a good day. Our garbage was picked up. Our mail was delivered. The electricity only went out once, and only for a brief while. Water pressure in the building where I work increased slightly, so we can now flush the urinal in the men’s room, if you pull on the handle for a [...]