After Hurricane Katrina, I posted a story about the effects of the hurricane. Well, Hurricane Rita tore through here last week and there is more to tell of hurricane effects. First, check out this wind map that I put together showing both storms' impact on the Gulf region:

I'm pretty proud of that map. It feels like it's a NOAA professionally made map. Fine, not really. But it shows all of the hurricane action that we got in the South Delta this past month.

As you can see, we didn't get hurricane or even tropical storm strength sustained winds from either storm. That doesn't mean that we didn't get a good share of rain, though. What we found with Rita was that they don't joke when they say, "Tornadoes can spawn from the hurricane." Tornado warnings kept going off on the news and the siren in town kept blaring. Although funnel clouds formed over Greenville, I didn't know that one actually touched down. But, my friend Steve saw this place get messed up as he was driving by:

Steve saw some beam fly into the front of it. The tornado touched down about five miles from here on the way to my school. Here is the back side of the place, with what appears to be a radio tower or something:

Finally, here is a picture not far from where the tornado touch down of power lines just chilling in the street. This happened in the middle of the night, presumably not long after we drove home right next to these power lines, last Saturday. It took crews three days to fix them.

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I forgot to post this picture weeks ago and I feel it's a must. This is Matt Starr at our fantasy football draft playing Vanna White in front of the rather fancy drafting board that we got.

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I had to share this lovely piece of art that was passed on to me from Brianna Twofoot. It is a portrait of her that one of her students drew for her -- and not in spite according to Brianna. Let's compare, shall we?

The first thing that stands out is the one eye. Now, I could understand the one eye thing if the child had no number sense, sense of body parts, or if Twofoot wore an eye patch around school, but Twofoot has taught her both of those things and she only wears the eye patch on the weekends (don't ask me why). The striking thing is that she gets two eyebrows for her one eye. Quite a feat.

Next is the horns. Now, I've drawn some horns on people in my day, but these top any creation I ever came up with. I think it's the spikes or discs that are coming out of them. They just make her look über vicious. Not that she isn't, to be fair. Just kidding, Twofoot.

Another fabulous liberty that the artist took was drawing four breasts instead of two. Fabulous.

Go down even farther and you can see that Twofoot has action figure knees. You know, the kind that came on some type of army man or something that made his knees move. Twofoot has the same ability as the action figure, or at least a machine-like element to herself, in the depiction.

Also noteworthy are the needle-like feet and arms.

Finally, I was glad that the artist did in fact clarify for us that she was drawing "towfoot" as a girl. Because it looks more like a rendition of the cyberdemon from Doom II.

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I think this is the best tardy slip I've ever received. Keep in mind that it's from a boy with a shaved head:

Of all the things he could have told the receptionist, like oversleeping, car trouble, etc., he chose doing his hair. Awesome.

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I did a lot of website updates this Saturday. Not that it matters to anybody reading, but I upgraded the site's software to Movable Type 3.0. In case you find anything that doesn't work correctly on the site, let me know immediately so that I can fix it. I found a couple things here and there that didn't work after the update, and I'm sure there's more out there.

Besides the software update, I gave the site a much needed facelift. It killed me to keep looking at the old, boring page for over a year and a half. Many of the new style elements are lifted from Apple, but hey, they do it best. I haven't gotten past the front page, but I'll knock the rest out pretty quick tomorrow. Please let me know what you think.

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This is stolen from here. Thought it was funny so I'm posting it.

The Ministry of Denim

The Ministry of Footloose Starring Kevin Bacon

The Ministry of the Beef, and Where It Currently Is

The Ministry of Girls Just Wanting to Have Fun

The Ministry of Fools, and the Pity With Which Mr. T Regards Them

The Ministry of Awesome

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Since Hurricane Katrina hit the Mississippi gulf coast and New Orleans, we've been feeling some of the effects up here in the Mississippi Delta. Here's some of what's happening up here in Greenville, MS.

School Transplant

The night after the hurricane, which I had off, I got a call from my assistant principal letting me know that we would have school the following day, but that we didn't have power in the building. School would therefore be held at another elementary school ... with two classes per classroom.

After flipping out, I went next door to tell Brianna about it and it sounded so outlandish that she refused to believe me. So the following day I made the students pack their books, got some things together quickly, and we headed over to the other school. I was sure to bring along my little white board, which I set up to teach from.

For as crazy as the day sounded it would be, it wasn't terrible. I luckily got stationed in the library and we just did some reading on the floor. It was like I was like I was back in Houston teaching kindergartners. The day went off without much trouble, though I didn't get a ton done, as one might understand.

Refugee Influx -- To My Classroom

Greenville is playing host to many of the victims of the hurricane. People are staying here at the convention center and with relatives. Last Friday we started having students enroll in school and by today we were up to 11 new students from New Orleans. One of them landed in my class. Through it all he seems to be getting along pretty well.

Satellite Images

Yesterday I started looking at some of the satellite imagery that's available. You can see huge images of New Orleans here or use a special version of Google Maps here.

I looked at two things in particular. First, I wanted to see what happened to Katerina's dorm, which I stayed at twice. Take a look at the difference:

Then I needed to know what happened to the lakefront Joe's Crab Shack. It doesn't seem like it's in great shape:

It looks like it took some damage to each side of it and the parking lot is flooded.

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This post has been in queue, but I've been busy and whatnot. Too bad, because it's a pretty good one.

Last week my dad and brother were driving to Maryland in order to get Kyle and his car to University of Maryland (see yesterday's post). On their way they made a slight detour and stopped in the Delta for a day and a half. They came to school with me for a day and I made them teach. Here's what happened.

Kyle taught the kids about heart rates, since he has EMT certification, which I tied into learning about rates in general.

Kyle taught them how to measure their heart rates and got them doing it.

It was a big hit. Everybody enjoyed it. Doesn't Kyle look so cute dealing with kids?

Some of the kids' estimates were way off, which Kyle tried to plausibly explain. But it was fun and an awesome kinesthetic activity. I'm really bad at coming up with those unless it's when we study physics.

After that my dad proceeded to teach my kids how to make the best paper airplane that my dad knows how to build.

He was explained what makes an airplane lift, which the kids were really interested in. We then took them outside for a test-run, and I must say that they flew pretty far. I had to preface that lesson by warning them that no such airplane flying would be tolerated in class.

Later in the day for science I did a comparison chart on what traits Kyle and I inherited and didn't inherit. We just happened to be studying inherited traits that day. That was fun because the kids asked about all kinds of funny things and found some inherited traits that I never thought about. For example, it's not clear where Kyle got his dimples and I clearly got my skin tone from the Scottish side of the family, as opposed to the side with some Cherokee Indian in it.

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Yesterday was Kyle's first day at UMD, so this post is a little late. But yes, he's begun and in the swing of things. Best of luck to him in the years ahead!

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