Well, at least one fan is back!

The Carolina Hurricanes opened their pre-season with two exhibition games this weekend.  Friday they defeated the Washington Crapitols 6-0 in both an impressive offensive performance and an impressive defensive performance.  Sunday, they lost to Florida 5-4 in an overtime shootout.  Sunday's game was free (admission and parking) so attendance at that game doesn't really count, but Friday's game was well attended for a pre-season game - announced attendance was 12,100 - though some season ticket holders probably didn't show up.

I called in today and ponied up for a 24 game "mini-plan" in the upper level corner seats, so I'm planning to attend a lot of games again this year.

I should mention that I also took Emily to the game on Sunday, and she really enjoyed it.  At least, the two periods that we stayed for!

We all know that New Orleans was extremely vulnerable to the kind of catastrophe that occurred when Hurricane Katrina came ashore a few weeks ago.  Now that New Orleans is slowly recovering (I heard at least one bar on Bourbon Street was open), let's make sure we don't forget that the hurricane season peaks on September 15.  We're barely over half way through!

Now it looks like Tropical Storm Rita - which is expected to increase in strength rapidly as it approaches the Florida Keys - is going to make a path through the Gulf of Mexico and make landfall somewhere on the coast of Texas.

Forecasts 5 days out of course are not particularly accurate, but the center of the national hurricane center's current forecast track takes Rita on shore just south of Galveston.

The Weather Channel web site has a list of vulnerable cities, one of which is Galveston.  Galveston is the site of the worst natural disaster in U.S. history - at least in terms of lives lost.  A category 4 hurricane roared ashore there in 1900 and over 20,000 people lost their lives.

Here's hoping we don't see anything like Katrina again in our lifetimes.