As some of you may know, I used to teach at Delgado Community College. I was full time until I started my own company back in January 2005. After that, I taught one class a semester as an adjunct. I remember talking to my students on the first day of class of the Fall 2005 semester. I made a comment about how the fall semester before, we lost a week of classes because of hurricane evacuations. I said "Hopefully that won't happen again this year." DOH! How about missing a whole semester of classes? And the powers that be thought that it would be fine to host the college's website and data bases and so on, on campus with no off-site redundancy. Therefore, for weeks there was no DCC e-mail or website or data. They had to boat in to retrieve the hard drives if I remember correctly. If you had a non DCC email for someone you could try to reach them. Otherwise too bad.

Unfortunately, I have not taught there since, either because they didn't need me or scheduling conflicts. I miss teaching and being an adjunct was great. You show up, you teach class, you grade. You don't have to get involved in committees and other academic nonsense. I don't have much patience for bureaucracy, which is why I decided not to pursue teaching full-time and went back into private practice.

I haven't been back on campus other than to go to the Symphony book fair. I was sad to read this article in the T-P.

Meanwhile, Delgado is continuing its steady post-Katrina growth with 16,715 students this semester, 16 percent more than last fall and only 4 percent below its pre-storm high of 17,398, which it reached days before the hurricane struck in August 2005, Delgado spokeswoman Molly Jahncke said.

For the first time in Delgado Community College's 88-year history, the area's most populous institution of higher education has turned away 1,500 applicants because it ran out of building space.

About 40 percent of the square footage of the City Park campus' buildings is out of commission, including the library.

... eight of the 21 buildings on the City Park campus are unusable.

They used to have stuff about the flooding after the federal levees flooded, including photos, but that appears to no longer be on the web site. There isn't even a mention of it under "Our History." I typed in Katrina in the search box and the info does still live, Hurricane Katrina Chronicals, just no recognizable links from the current website.

I'm still here. Just been distracted. We added a new feline to the Kitty Krewe. Click here to meet Harold the kitten.

Second day of September and first day of Criminal Court jury duty. I was feeling nervous this morning. Didn’t know what to expect. Wasn’t that bad, just boring. You feel like cattle though. I entered through the main entrance but I think we can enter through a back entrance. I walked up the stair through the front where you have to put your belonging in an x-ray machine and go through a metal detector. Then down an ancient elevator to the basement. The holding pen, oops, I mean jury lounge, is a huge, windowless room full of chairs. You check in then take a seat. There’s a display on the wall that show how many courts are left for the day. There are 12 courts and we started at 8. The first pool of 25 people got called, left the lounge and then promptly returned because something had been canceled. It weird sitting there listening to them call out the names, waiting in anticipation to see if you are going to hear your name or not. They do provide coffee and tea and there’s a small kitchen with a microwave and refrigerator. I was getting stir crazy and around 11:00 took a trip to the snack bar on the first floor. I brought snacks but really just wanted to walk around. You have to sign out on a list so they can find you if they need to. You can also go outside for a smoke break. Councilman Arnie Fielkow is in my group. He said he was trying to get out of it. I was standing next to him so I asked jokingly “You’re not exempt?” and he said no. He got to wait with the rest of us. He moved over to the other waiting room, the quiet room where you aren’t supposed to talk. I main room has 2 TVs and I’m not a fan of daytime TV. It’s not bad if you aren’t seated close to them. I passed time on Facebook, checking email – there is free Wi-Fi, which is good because you can’t get much of a signal down there. Listened to a business podcast I’ve wanted to listen to for a month now. Trying to do some constructive stuff with my time. One woman was knitting. There’s a good way to past the time. Too bad I don’t know how. My name didn't get called and we got released around noon. Never been so happy to go to work.