Gustav, get away.

Am I the only one who thinks some sort of tutorial should be provided to navigate the National Hurricane Center website? There are so many tabs and colors and links I did not know where to begin. Don't get me wrong, I love a pretty map just as much as the next girl but the various shades of peach/beige/mauve can be quite confusing. I mean...is there a Hazardous Weather Outlook or is there a forest on fire somewhere? The only determination that I can conclude within 5 minutes is that the air quality in Houston/Galveston sucks today.

I finally found Public Advisory 18A where they give a bunch of details that I don't really care about. Why can't they just make life easy and put a big Father Wind graphic or a simple blinking red dot? Thank you, National Weather Service, for making me feel stupid. Well, after an additional 10 to 20 minutes of browsing, I came to the conclusion that they still have no idea if Galveston will be hit by hurricane Gustav or how badly we could be affected. I hope my taxes (do I even pay taxes??) aren't going to NASA because clearly they are short of a few satellites. And thus, the waiting game continues...round 1,347.

I have a lot of Democratic National Convention to catch up on and I cannot wait. I have heard that Barack Obama's speech last night was nothing short of amazing, and I would expect nothing else. I think many people are quick to attribute Obama's eloquence to theatrics but in my opinion, did a little idealism ever hurt anyone? JFK certainly didn't think so.

"We need men who can dream of things that never were."
-John F. Kennedy, speech in Dublin, Ireland, June 28, 1963