I hate this

Okay, so yesterday morning, Celeste and I packed up all of our worldly possessions and left our brand new apartment in Houston to try to outrun Rita. We left at 6:45 in the morning to go back to Alexandria, which normally takes about four and a half hours. Things were okay for a little bit, but we soon hit traffic on I-10. Bad traffic. Traffic that didn't let up for a long, long time. We created our own lanes on the shoulder and even drove over a couple of medians, but it still took 9 hours to go 70 miles. Yeah, it was wretched. When we got to Beaumont we had had enough and pulled off the road to rest for a little bit. We managed to find a restaurant that was in the process of being boarded up, so we asked the owners if we could use their bathrooms. Luckily, they were agreeable. Even more luckily for us, they were generous and gave us diet coke and a roll, which was easily the greatest meal I had had in a long time. By the time we left, nothing was open in Houston so we didn't really have much in the way of food. I had a box of Banana Nut Crunch cereal and Celeste had some chips and salsa, but we were famished. If anyone has a chance to visit the Cheddars off of I-10 in Beaumont (if it still exists after the storm hits) just know that it is owned by good people.

And we were off again. We got off of I-10 at 109, which took us into back rural Louisiana roads. I really hate rural LA. 109 was okay, but then we had to switch to some other road, which was not moving at all. As horrible as bumper to bumper traffic on the interstate is, its way worse on poorly lit back roads in rural LA. Oh yeah, and my cell phone lost service at around this point, so it was just me in the car, completely alone. It took us a few more hours to get to the first "big" town, which was Deridder. We pulled over into the parking lot of a Taco Bell, where we rested and I used Celeste's cell phone to call my parents and assure them I was still alive. And then we were back on the road. I played around with my cell phone settings so i could get a roaming signal, so I at least was able to talk to people. I called Rebecca and burst into tears. Then I talked to my dad and stepmother and burst into tears. Then I talked to Celeste, who was driving her car in front of me, and burst into tears. It was a bad situation. We finally made it to Celeste's mom's house at 11:45 pm. I have never been so happy to see Alexandria in my life. I love my new car, but I don't want to sit in it again for a very long time.

Oh, and now that we're here in Alexandria, Rita has changed course, and now it looks like Alexandria will actually get hit worse than Houston.

Seriously, this could completely be God's way of telling me to stay in New York.