immediate wishlist, in no particular order:

• one of these keyboard purses
  
• a light green vespa
• a sewing machine to match my vespa
• a nap

okay, back to my paper. hooray for tonight's deadline, since there is no way i'm spending another weekend working on this...

good news: my big sis #2 is out of galveston, though not by much. apparently it took her 9 hours to drive from galveston to houston. we're talking 50 miles. 9 hours. wow.

anyway, since she's a fancy doctor she'll volunteer at the houston hospital for now. but man. that hurricane looks horrific. i wonder what the entire nation would be worrying about for the last month if katrina and rita had never transpired. egad, the power of media.

[by the way, the national hurricane center website is completely and utterly incomprehensible! i just wanted to find out what storms from names L to P had elapsed in the meantime. all i can gather from about 10 minutes poking around is 'Lee' and 'Philippe'. stupidly, i cannot access september's report until the end of september! i did learn, however, that there was a hurricane fernanda on the tip of southern baja california on aug 9 - 17. i'm sure our fernanda had absolutely nothing to do with this. despite the surfing inclinations.]

alright, enough of meteorology brain suckage. i shall now resume my paper. :)