 |
| This is the reason New Orleans took the day off. |
Commerce and Industry has ground to a halt here in New Orleans. It is 33 degrees in our neighborhood, with light sleet. Guards have been posted at bridges, just in case ice forms. Except in the north, icy streets haven't happened yet. Might not.
We just finished an episode of The Sopranos. If we get our Netflix envelope down to the mail drop by 3:45, we'll get another episode on Friday, and see if Paulie has prostate cancer or if Christopher can make his overnight marriage work or if Tony sells his real estate.
So as soon as the final episode popped out of the player, Stan pulled on his hat, coat and gloves and set out for the mail drop, five blocks away on busy Magazine Street.
It was an invigorating stroll, but not cold enough to see your breath or freeze the puddles of water standing in the street. Little drops of sleet/rain melted on my coat sleeve. Magazine is normally an active thoroughfare. The only traffic today was the No. 11 bus. You could have walked down the middle of Magazine. The citizens are hiding in their shelters, schools are closed. But the mail must go through, right? so Stan didn't bother to call ahead.
When he got to the UPS/FedEx/USPS store on Magazine, he saw a note in the door from "Heidi."
You've got to be kidding, he said to himself because there was no one else to say it to.
The note said that Fed/Ex had pulled its trucks at 11 a.m. and that Heidi would be back "when the roads are safe."
If the condition of Magazine Street is any yardstick, that could be a long, long, time. We'll just settle in, watch the weather people drone on about "the mess" and wait for the weekend. It will be 72 degrees by then and perhaps sanity will have returned.
