Today the crowds have been more crowded, the people happier, and there's been a sense of hope in the air. The Saints were playing back at the Superdome for the first time since it became an emergent shelter to the victims of Katrina. I don't pay much attention to football, but I hope the Saints win, because this town could use some cheer. I've only seen a few Atlanta Hawks around. This morning at Cafe du Monde, a guy playing his sax sang out, "Oh when the Saints, and those dirty birds, oh when those Saints beat those dirty birds, how I want to be in that number, when the Saints beat those dirty birds!" Everyone sang along and cheered. It was a good moment, and possibly the most cheerful moment since we've arrived.

Yesterday I worked a second day at the Children's Museum, while my mom cooled her heels at the New Orleans Museum of Art. She saw an exhibit of photos of Katrina through the eyes of those who lived it. She said it was full of eerie photos of floating bodies, people living on their roofs and in their attics, and someone had written ,"the water is rising, PLEASE HELP," in chalk on their roof. Many people had photographed shotgun shacks that had floated off their foundations, and cars that had floated over roofs and fences and had stuck there when the water came back down. Sadder still were photographs of kids toys, wet, dirty, moldy, but still had belonged to children and left during the panic of Katrina.

While I was at the Children's Museum I spoke to a few of the people who worked there. One woman, who was in her 60's, had to help evacuate her entire family, some 7 children, 12 grandchildren, and great grandchildren as well. More seriously she had to evacuate her 80 year old parents. They were driving along I-10 and asked a police officer if there were any hotels in the area, or shelters, and he said no, but instead took them to a church in Franklin who'd just completed construction on a million dollar gymnasium. For the next few weeks they lived there, her parents were given privacy by clearing out a storage room and putting some beds in it.

She told me how one of her daughters worked in a nursing home, and while most of the employees took off to save themselves, she stayed behind and took care of her patients. She told me how one of her grandsons couldn't sleep at night, especially when it would rain. At 23 years of age, he would get up and start pacing, worrying about the water and if the house would flood again. His younger brothers and sisters would get up with him, because they naturally followed his lead.

I spoke to Jody, a junior in high school, who grew up in New Orleans. His family evacuated, and while his father has been a roofer for over 20 years, they only just completed repairs on their own roof. His dad's been busy working on everyone else's roof, kind of reminded me of the saying that the shoemaker's kids go barefoot. He said that for the most part school had gone back to normal, he had all his usual classes and teachers. They had started construction on some new classrooms before Katrina, and they'd been put off for a while, but they were supposed to be done sometime after spring break.

I think a lot of the victims of Katrina want to tell their story, want to be able to share and to tell someone what they went through. They all echoed the same sentiment of moving forward and not looking back. Today was a glimmer of what New Orleans can become again.

My mom and I drove up to New Orleans on Friday, and it took us the better part of a day to get here. When we got closer to Mississippi and Louisiana you could see trees bend over completely, or snapped in half, their sharp tips pointing at the sky, almost as if threatening to poke holes in it. Closer to New Orleans you could see huge business signs bend over, crushing the businesses they used to advertise. Even Wal-Mart had shut down. Old hotels were being used as apartments.

Right now New Orleans has only about a third of its original residents still living, working, and trying to get by. In addition, I haven't seen too many tourists. Walking around, or riding the streetcars, you get the feeling you're in a ghost town. My mom spoke to two gentlemen from the Central Business Guardians. They're basically guys paid for by the City of New Orleans to monitor the area and help tourists and they've been hard at work since Katrina. She told them how we'd come to volunteer and to spend money and they asked her to tell people to come and visit, and that they didn't have to volunteer. They said one tourist told them that her friends thought New Orleans was still under water. Because of all the media imagery of a flooded New Orleans, and the lack of updates on how things really are in New Orleans, it's truly become a city forgotten, forsaken.

Yesterday we went to the Louisiana Children's Museum to help volunteer in the art room and my mom read books at story time. The children's museum has been up and running since June, and has had a good amount of visitors, better than the aquarium down the road. The only thing they haven't gotten up and running is the museum gift shop, and that's only because they haven't found anyone who wants to move to New Orleans to run it. Joanne, who does art education at the museum, moved to New Orleans after Katrina to work at the museum, having previously lived in California. She wanted to help New Orleans in some way.

Most of the people I met have been people who lived in New Orleans their whole life and just had to come back after Katrina, because it's home, because they wanted to rebuild, and because they just felt a strong connection to the city that care forgot. T-shirts in the tourist trap stores echo the bitterness of some residents: Make Levees, Not War; FEMA evacutation plan - run fucker run; FEMA Fix Everything? My Ass!

I say bring them on:

A crop of the 3-D, body-measuring devices are replacing outdated sizing paradigms, and they're making shopping for clothes that are inconsistently sized and unrealistically fitted a little less painful.

"These scanners are taking body measurements that are converted into patterns from which garments are cut," said apparel product development specialist Lenda Jo Connell from Auburn University.

"This saves a lot of time because, otherwise, it's a one-on-one, hands-on process," said Connell. "It lines up with mass customization and is one of the islands of technology … that are beginning to link together so that you can get scanned, and that information is used to produce a garment for one...

"Because the hourglass figure represents such a small percentage of American women, the larger the market share a retailer targets, the more likely it is to provide clothes based on the wrong body shape," said Janice Wang, CEO of Alvanon, parent of AlvaProducts...

"There’s no doubt that these scanners will become a part of the shopping experience," said Fabulous Fit author Judith Rasband, founder and CEO of Conselle Institute of Image Management. "It's a matter of how long it will take for retail owners to become acquainted with the technology and its application."

My mom and I recently read about Voluntourism and decided it was something we'd definitely be interested in. Voluntourism is when you go on vacation and spend a few days of your trip doing volunteer work in the place you're visiting. For us we decided that we wanted our money and our assistance to go to New Orleans, who is still rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and will be for several years to come.

We found a list online of places that were requesting volunteers and out of that list we picked a few museums and gardens that interested us. My mom is in her 60's and loves gardening as well as archaeology, and I'm 30 and love working with art and children. In the end, out of about 10 places we emailed only 3 emailed us back. I wonder if some of the other organizations didn't last. The ones we did hear from were glad to have us available to them. One volunteer organizer told me that after Hurricane Katrina they not only suffered damage to their gardens, but also lost most of their volunteers and staff. After Katrina, many people moved away, having decided to start a new life elsewhere.

I'm going to New Orleans for a week starting Friday and will try to post my experiences. Until then, laissez les bons temps rouler!!!

Yesterday I stood in line for 2 hours to get the rush tickets for RENT in Fort Lauderdale and it was SO worth it! I'd never heard of this, but apparently rush tickets aren't done for all shows, but RENT is one that's always offered the first 3 rows for 20 bucks, something about the writer knowing what it's like to be a broke artist and wanting the common man to be able to afford tickets. Let me tell you, waiting in the rain for 2 hours was TOTALLY worth it! I will definitely do it again.

RENT, if you haven't seen it, is about a group of friends living/squatting in an old warehouse. Roger's a frustrated musician living with HIV after his girlfriend died and Marc is his filmmaker roommate. Benny used to live with Roger and Marc, but has since moved onto wealthier times and now owns the building. Benny wants the homeless people in the ouside lot to get out so he can build something else, and Maureen (Marc's ex-girlfriend who now bats for the other team) wants to throw a protest over it.

The main characters are interesting, but I really fell for the homeless couple Tom Collins and his drag-queen girlfriend Angel. Angel was so audacious and sparkling that she stole the stage every scene she was in. Also hilarious was Marc's answering machine scenes in which his mother would fret about him and prospective employers would try to tantalize him with soul-less gigs.

RENT's on the road, and if it comes near your town I highly recommend it! Now I can't wait to get the soundtrack...

Video gamers... get ready to start your engines. Wii is coming:

Nintendo announced Thursday that its new game console, called Wii, will launch in North and South America on Nov. 19 with a $250 price tag and a bundled sports game. Compared to the $600 PlayStation 3, which also launches in November, Wii is a good deal for gamers... The game included in the package, Wii Sports, features a variety of sports minigames that use the console's unique motion-sensitive controller, which is shaped like a television remote... Nintendo will have its own home-grown games Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Excite Truck available at launch for $50... Nintendo also took the wraps off the machine's final feature, which it calls "Wii Channel". From the same menu used to boot games, users can browse the web, edit and share photos with friends, and get free news and weather updates from dedicated services.

I love this headline from Yahoo!News

News The Taliban are on the move again in Afghanistan. And, in other news, Suri Cruise has two eyes, a nose and a full head of hair.

Who gives a shit? Honestly, here we go again obsessing about a CHILD, just an ordinary child. Who cares if her parents are actors? Who cares how much they make, or if her dad is a Scientologist? Since when is someone's religion ANYONE's business? Do I care how Katie Holmes feels about the media's treatment of Tom Cruise? Not really.

So they're going to be on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine. Nice for them. So people have been reporting sightings of their baby. Uhh, mmmkay. Did anyone doubt the existance of their baby? Does anyone think that maybe they want privacy because it's their kid, and not something to be part of the media madness that is TomKat? Maybe I'll do the same thing someday. Run around with my baby, yelling please no pictures!