Updates
It's been a slow week here at Capital Beat . . . I've been working on a couple things that have proven to be a bit more tedious than I expected. Not that you would have seen much out of me this week anyway, since I've been mainly trying to spin up a couple things for later this month.
There's still no word on lottery commission appointments. If, as Speaker Black says, the governor and legislature want to announce all nine appointments together, it'll probably be next week before you hear anything for certain.
That's because the Gov. Mike Easley has hurricane Ophelia on the brain right now. Not that paying attention to the storm is a bad thing, given recent events down on the gulf and the odd-ball nature of this slow-moving storm.
To show us how hard he's working, Easley has been doing daily news conferences, the last couple in the basement of the state administration building, which serves as an emergency operations center of sorts - it's all very war room like, complete with some big honking maps and grim looking guys in various uniforms.
The good news so far seems to be that the storm, which isn't expected blow completely out of North Carolina until tomorrow, has done some damage but there are no reports of deaths yet. Easley urges everyone to be cautious, offering up that more people get hurt or killed after a storm passes than by the storm itself.
Clean up on the southern-most sections of North Carolina's coast have already begun, as the storm passed by the Wilmington area earlier this morning. Expect to see shots on the local news of Easley and other folks touring / flying over the affected areas.