It's busyness that's next to Godliness, right?

If you're wondering why I haven't been posting lately, it's because work has been keeping me very busy. Between unrelenting hurricane coverage, I've also tried to keep up with my usual entertainment sections.

Last weekend I took pictures at the Greek Festival and at Taste of the Summit. The week before that I did the same with Pet-a-Palooza and the Birmingham Zoo's 50th Birthday Celebration. (My apologies that Emily doesn't appear in the galleries. She went to each event with me, and her pictures will be posted later on Flickr.)

This week I've been focused two of the biggest entertainment events of the year in Alabama — Big Spring Jam and the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival. I spent a lot of time putting together iPod festival guides for each, so please download them.

Jam Guide ... Sidewalk Guide

Before you tell me that you don't have an iPod, click here and sign up to get a free iPod Nano (this really works — I've recieved a 20G iPod and a 1G Shuffle from these offers already). Even if you don't want one, you can at least help me get mine. That way, with the Nano's color graphics capabilities, I can start adding nifty site maps and other pictures to the event guides.

All things come to an end

They just tore down the soda fountain where I met my wife.

The hurricane post

It seems like everybody is blogging about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I've read frightening stories of personal experience, thoughtful words of encouragement, engaging discourse about how things are being handled, and inspiring calls to action. But I don't feel like I have any words to contribute, myself.

I've been saturated with hurricane news over the past few days. When something huge like this happens, I have to put aside my usual entertainment production duties and focus on the bigger picture. But it goes beyond just me putting in overtime and helping with news production. The staff of NOLA.com (one of al.com's sister sites) is displaced from their city. They're scattered in different places around the country and can't return home — at a time when their site's traffic is going insane with people trying to get information. So we've been helping them where we can.

Anyway, I'm getting 8-12 hours a day of Katrina. That's not a complaint — I'm happy to do it. This isn't one of those sensational but inconsequential stories that you get sick of hearing about — it's just exhausting. There are so many things I'm thinking, but I'm counting on others to put the words out there. After everything I've seen and read, I don't feel like adding something more to the pile.

I'm gonna git you, Sucka

I have a feeling that there may be a new push for us to adopt a cat. When I opened the garage door this morning, there was a dead rat laying in our driveway. As far as rats go, it wasn't hiddeous. It was more like a super-sized mouse, actually. Nevertheless, its presence is sure to have triggered Misty's initiative to bring home a cat and give it a ridiculous name.