I Lost My Home & My 2 Cats

I just heard on the CNN that where I live is under 13 feet of water because the levee broke! The break in the levee is about 2 blocks wide and the efforts put into patching it failed. I guess that means that I lost my 2 cats and my house. They are telling us on the news that we can't go home for over a month... Maybe longer! I'm so sorry I had to leave my cats in the house! I wish I would have taken them with me! I don't know why I didn't MAKE their kennel fit in the car... All I have is the little bit of clothes that I packed, my family, and 3 dogs and NOTHING else! It's all gone! I never though it would happen to me!

My 20 hour Hurricane Katrina evacuation that should have only taken 5 or 6 hours

My 20 hour Hurricane Katrina evacuation that should have only taken 5 - 6 hours

I just wanted to tell you about my 20 hour hell! It took 20 hours to drive a distance that should have taken about 5 -6 hours. I ended up evacuating New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina after all! I packed up some snack food that I could eat on the road and an ice chest with some ice that I had to get from my own freezer because I knew there would be no stopping at a gas station for a long time. Good thing I did, because all the stations were either closed for the hurricane or they were packed full of people and the lines were out of the door or they were sold out of everything! It was so nice to reach in the back seat and pull out an ice cold drink!!! I packed all 3 of my dogs in the back of the suv with the doggie gate to keep them in the back (glad I had that gate). The backs seat was packed with 2 blankets, 2 pillows, an ice chest, my back pack of goodies, and 2 bags filled with as much of our clothes as we could fit. What I did forget to pack was dog food so my dogs had meals of snack food too. When we were about to get on the interstate this woman got so mad at us for pulling in front of her that she got onto the shoulder of the road and tried to drive into our car door to get back in front of us. She even rolled down the window and yelled ugly things at us and put out her middle finger! I don't know why she was having such road rage because we had LOTS of time to get out of town!!! We just looked at her like she was weird! Any way! When we finally got on to I10 we ended up in front of her because our lane was moving and hers was not so I quickly crawled over Danny who was driving, rolled down his window, put my head out and smiled really big and waved bye to her and she in turn shot me the bird with every bit of mean energy should could muster! It was so funny! I wish you could have seen her face! Oh, back to the hurricane, traffic was NUTS!!!!!! We were at a dead stop for a while and when we were moving it wasn't but 5 mph if that! The cars were pretty much just stopped. One of our friends from the gym happened to be in front of us and he didn't have time to pack any food or anything for the road. Because traffic was just stopped he was able to just get out of his truck and come to our window and talk to us. I gave him a diet 7up, a pack of gram crackers, and some chips. Other people were getting out of their cars as well. Some had their doors open, others got out on the interstate just to be able to stand up. Traffic was moving so slowly that people who were tired of sitting were walking along side of their cars while someone else was driving! I don't think that was all that safe though! The reason I say that is because every once in a while someone would get sick of waiting and would just take off down the shoulder of the road to cut in front of other cars. Most of them got pulled over by cops though. Both lanes of traffic were moving in one direction to be able to get more cars out of the city. I couldn't even imagine what it would have been like trying to get out with out opening both sides of the interstate to evacuate. When we finally got far enough so that we could find a gas station that was open it was packed full of people. The lines to the restrooms were out of the doors and so were the lines at the registers. To get out of New Orleans we had to go way out of our way because so many of the highways and interstates were being redirected or closed. We went north out of Louisiana into Mississippi then went west and through the top of North Louisiana and into Texas. We didn't have time to book a hotel room so we had NO idea where we were going! All the hotels were booked up and even if I would have called around to book a hotel before I left they would have already been booked up any way! When we got to Lindale Texas which is some place near Dallas Texas we still couldn't find a hotel. One of our friends happened to call us on our cell phone and offered to let us and our dogs stay in his room so we took him up on the offer and split the cost of the room with him. The only thing was that we had been driving about 20 hours straigt and had not slept for about 36 hours, our eyes were starting to cross and his hotel was in Houston Texas which was 4 -5 hours away!! We kept stopping at gas stations along the way to wake ourselves up, walk the dogs, etc.. We were so tired when we finally made it! We were in the parking lot of the hotel when looking for the paper we wrote the hotel info on so we would know what room our friend was in but it turns out the paper got trashed when we cleaned the car out! OMG! No big deal right! I have his cell phone number in my phone so I can just call him right! NOPE! Kept getting a message that the call could not go through due to the hurricane in our area and then a loud beeping sound! I had to call the hotel and ask them if they could connect me to his room even though we didn't know his last name! How fun was that!! I sounded like such a blonde but the guy working knew exactly who I was talking about and connected me to his room. Now we have 3 people staying in 1 hotel room with 4 dogs. He has a sweet greyhound and I have a pug, lhasa, and a lab. I hope my 2 cats are ok because I left them in the house with LOTS of big buckets of food and water on the counter. I'm watching the news on t.v. and they are showing pictures and video footage of New Orleans flooded! I called the hospital near my house and they said the whole area where I live is flooded! I hope my cats jumped up high and are ok. On the news were saying that we can't go back for at least a week but, now they are saying on the news that it may be longer and that it could take as long as 6 months just to pump the water out of the French Quarter! If my house is flooded I guess I won't have anything to move when I do move! Other than that we are all safe so I guess that's what matters most!

Here are some pictures of New Orleans after the hurricane:
St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans flooded

This is I10-can't even see the interstate!

Brick building blown down-I think it was an apt. building but I could be wrong.

Picture of someones car flooded

My Business Card

Here is my new business card.

Big Hurricane Coming

Looks like we have a big hurricane on it's way. The news says it's going to hit New Orleans and that it's a number 4. The winds are going to be over 115 mph. or higher from what they are saying on the news. New Orleans is very low lying... kind of like a big bowel. So if it floods we are all going to be in trouble. A direct hit can wipe out New Orleans. I'm sure we will be fine though! About 40% of the people in New Orleans already left and a bunch more are going to be driving out in the morning. I'm not sure if I'm going to evacuate or if I'm going to stay. I'll decide in the morning.

Cartoon Of Me!

Here is a cartoon drawing of me that Tasos Anastasiades from www.PlasticComics.com drew of me! He's making a comic with me staring in it!

This was clipped from the news paper

Just click to enlarge!

New Section Added To The Members Area

Recently I've been getting some requests for some of the older adult work I've done in the past so I've decided to add a new section to my members area with all of those photo sets. The new page will be updated regularly like the rest of my members area so keep an eye out for updates! :o) In all the older photo sets I was 18 - 20 years old.

Just An FYI - Every Wonder Where The Word SHIT Comes From?

Origin of the S-Word Ever wonder where the word "shit" comes from. Well here it is: Certain types of manure used to be transported (as everything was back then) by ship. In dry form it weighs a lot less, but once water (at sea) hit it. It not only became heavier, but the process of fermentation began again, of which a by-product is methane gas. As the stuff was stored below decks in bundles you can see what could (and did) happen; methane began to build up below decks and the first time someone came below at night with a lantern. BOOOOM! Several ships were destroyed in this manner before it was discovered what was happening. After that, the bundles of manure where always stamped with the term "S.H.I.T" on them which meant to the sailors to "Ship High In Transit." In other words, high enough off the lower decks so that any water that came into the hold would not touch this volatile cargo and start the production of methane. Bet you didn't know that one. Here I always thought it was a golf term.

Video Clips Are Back Up!

I just added the video clips back to the site! Just wanted to let you know!

My Day! Wasn't A Happy Camper When I Woke Up!

>:( I'm not a happy camper! I bought one of those expensive Motorola Razor cell phones a few weeks ago. I LOVED that phone! I downloaded a cute ring tone, wallpaper, and screen saver, and had it set just like I wanted it. I had a bunch of pictures in it that I didn't get to copy to my computer yet because the phone was still so new... Well any way... now that I've told you that part I'll skip over the the part where my husbands feet were killing him so I went to Wall-Mart to buy him one of those heated foot baths so he could soak his feet. Well, my cat loves to knock things on to the floor to watch them fall. You know how cats love to watch moving things... It's a cat thing! Well, I'm sure you can guess where I'm going with this story huh? My cat jumped on the desk and pushed my phone over the edge and into the water! Now I have no cell phone but, I do have a $20 foot bath!!!!!! Just GREAT! Oh, and I took the insurance off cell phone a few weeks ago because I never used it in all the years I had a cell phone!

Other than that, I went to the gym today! I trained legs but didn't go very heavy on them because they are already so big. I stopped at a plate on each side. I did do some heavy lounges to try to make my glutes grow and I did a few other things for legs. When I was done with that I did 40 mins of cardio to help out with all that extra food I've been eating. :o)

I called Andrea Trent on the phone tonight so we could fill out the CCbill form together so she can set up the billing on her site. Once that's in place the site will be ready for it's grand opening! I can't wait untill her site is up and running. I'm trying to get it up as soon as possible for her because she's already waited over a year for another webmaster to help her with her site and that fell through. So I told her that I would get it up for her. So when it's up I hope some my fans support her by joining her fan club. You can visit her site at http://www.AndreaTrent.com

New Merchants Account/Billing

I just got the new merchants account in place on my join page so if you joined using the new merchants account and had trouble logging in the problem is now fixed. All CCbill members will be able to log in like normal. Nothing will change for CCbill members. I just wanted to keep everyone posted on what's changed on my site www.MelissaDettwiller.com ! Also, you can find my new posters for sale on the store page of my site http://www.melissadettwiller.com/store/index.html . I still accept Pay Pal payments for all items sold on my site but, I took the Pay Pal buttons down and replaced them with the new merchants account. I accept Visa, MasterCard, AMEX, and Discover!

Melissa Dettwiller Posters

Hi everyone! I just got my new posters in the mail today! They are fresh off the press and I have them posted for sale on the store page of my site. You can find them HERE! The posters are 18 inches wide by 24 inches tall! I think the photographer did a great job with them!! :O)

XOXOXO,
Melissa
http://www.melissadettwiller.com

I'm Building Andrea Trent's New Web Site

Guess what?! I'm building my friend Andrea Trent's website for her. You can see what I have so far if you go to www.AndreaTrent.net . Well, now you know what I've been working on for the last week. lol! It's pretty much done. All I have left to do is add her content to the members area of her site for her and she needs to write some info about her self for her about me pages, etc.. It's coming along pretty good!

http://www.AndreaTrent.net