Made the decision, took our chances and headed out Friday around noon. Went to New Orleans for the Heather Graham Writers for New Orleans Conference. Got evacuated from the hotel Saturday around noon. The events that took place were great, it was a very small, very nice conference. It would be been wonderful without the threat of Gustav. Oh well. Hey I have a pitch written that I didn't before :)

I had fun, meet a lot of great people. I felt horrible about driving home when so many people had to stay at the airport and wait for their flights, most for more than 24 hours. The airport was closing at 6 pm today and anyone who didn’t already get a flight out was being bused to nearby airports. I hope everyone with the conference made it out and home safely.

Looks like it’s a good thing we came home when we did. We are basically ready at a moments notice, but we did spend part of today moving stuff (that could go flying around). It looks like we are going to be on the east side of the eye and have some pretty strong sustained wind and a lot of rain. Hoping we stay safe and don’t get too much damage. Will check back in when I can.

Below is a picture of me with Jospehine Templeton (a friend from HeartLA who braved Gustave with me:) and the wonderful Cynthia Eden. I met many other wonderful people and you can see some of them scrambling around in the background, since we snapped this picture just after the announcement the hotel was being closed. Barbara Vey has some reports from the confrence at her blog.