The Brutality of Texas Thunder Storms
I have a class to go to this evening. Unfortunately it is something that I have to take and I cannot get out of it. I will not go into that at this particular time, lets just say they are mandatory. I will write more later. I need to get going. I have to be there at 7:00 and it is already 6:30. I know that there is no traffic here in my miniature metropolis of 42,000 but I do not want to take the chance. I am allowed one "Get Out Of Being Late" card and I don't want to use that up right now. It usually isn't that bad, there is a lot of useful information and I am able to not only get something out of the class but also give something back. It to me is very fulfilling.
My class ran late. It seems that we will have Memorial Day weekend off so we have to cram extra long (A Extra Hour) so that the class will not run over the allotted time. July 10th is the target date to finish and I want it done as soon as possible. I do not want to let it interfere anymore with my life than it already does. I know that it is only 2 nights a week but still, I have things to do, pictures to work on, important dates to keep. K. and I already do not have enough time together and I want to get more than an IM or a occasional phone call. I haven't seen her in over a month now and it is getting to be a pain in my ass.
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OK, Before I continue, It is 12:39 A.M. my time, and I just now received a voice mail from 2:07 P.M. yesterday. I am using Sprint and that kind of scares me that their service is this "Reliable". I may be switching carriers. I had the same thing happen over the weekend on 2 other voice mails that were sent on Sunday and I didn't receive them till 7:30 P.M. last night. That is pretty embarrassing when someone says that they called and left a voice mail and you tell them that you never read it but it was because it never got to you. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. I think that this would be a good time to change. OK, back to my rant
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After my class, 10:00, I decided to do the Denny's thing and have breakfast for dinner. I didn't feel like cooking this evening and I needed the rest from the "Chef Boy Ar Tom" thing. There are some very "Interesting People" in there in the middle of the night that is for sure. I sat in the back, windows to the front for my personal reasons, watched everyone file in and out, occasionally someone would stop and talk. I could do that where I was at, BP can be a MF sometimes but tonight it didn't bother me. I continued to watch and then I talked to the waitress who informed me that it was suppose to rain again. Yeah, Rain... If you want to call it that. It never just rains here in Texas. At least where I am at.
As I sat there I had a view off to the west and watched a storm system blow in. Gentle rains at first and then full throttle gushing downpours and horizontal winds. The lightening was very intense. At first it danced back and forth through the clouds and then flashes struck the ground with full force. The claps seemed to be a block away. There was no time in between when the light flashing and the thunder that followed. I decided that Denny's was much safer than my apartment. If it was as "interesting" as last night I didn't feel like going back to the apartment. That was not a safe haven for me considering what last night was like. Let me explain...
I received a call from a friend in McKinney last night that I needed to watch the news because there were tornado's in my area. I was walking in the door as we had this conversation. A storm had already past about 10 minutes earlier and I thought the worst of it was over. Hey, it was clear, what did I have to worry about? I was wrong. I turned on the television and it was nothing but news news news. The television station was running on emergency power and they talked about the 5 tornado's that had been sighted in the area.
As I watched I learned that one was coming up the road from me 7 miles away straight up the highway that I live on. Fearing the worst, I looked around for what I could use for shelter. I have a tennis court to the front and of course living on the second level of a apartment, all I could do was crawl in the bathtub with a mattress over me. It didn't matter because I knew the chances of getting through a tornado living on the second story were slim to none. Yes, I was in full panic mode. I will not lie about that. It was a chore in itself trying to get a queen sized mattress into the bathroom but I managed.
So, with television blaring, flashlight and cell-phone in hand I started making calls. Most locally to see if anyone had any good news. Everything that I heard was bad bad bad. By this time I was totally freaked. I made one last call to a friend of mine in Dallas. They never answered. I hoped that they were not having the same problems down there. I didn't know and at this point I could only hope they weren't. Maybe they were having the same problems with their phone that I was having with mine. It could be very possible. Needless to say, the storms passed, I got to wrestle the mattress back out of the bathroom and everything got back to normal. Of course they did. Otherwise I wouldn't be here to talk about it.
Thunderstorms here in Texas can be beautiful when viewed from a far... Though they can be brutal when you are in the middle of one. I don't recommend the latter to anyone.
T.
My class ran late. It seems that we will have Memorial Day weekend off so we have to cram extra long (A Extra Hour) so that the class will not run over the allotted time. July 10th is the target date to finish and I want it done as soon as possible. I do not want to let it interfere anymore with my life than it already does. I know that it is only 2 nights a week but still, I have things to do, pictures to work on, important dates to keep. K. and I already do not have enough time together and I want to get more than an IM or a occasional phone call. I haven't seen her in over a month now and it is getting to be a pain in my ass.
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OK, Before I continue, It is 12:39 A.M. my time, and I just now received a voice mail from 2:07 P.M. yesterday. I am using Sprint and that kind of scares me that their service is this "Reliable". I may be switching carriers. I had the same thing happen over the weekend on 2 other voice mails that were sent on Sunday and I didn't receive them till 7:30 P.M. last night. That is pretty embarrassing when someone says that they called and left a voice mail and you tell them that you never read it but it was because it never got to you. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. I think that this would be a good time to change. OK, back to my rant
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After my class, 10:00, I decided to do the Denny's thing and have breakfast for dinner. I didn't feel like cooking this evening and I needed the rest from the "Chef Boy Ar Tom" thing. There are some very "Interesting People" in there in the middle of the night that is for sure. I sat in the back, windows to the front for my personal reasons, watched everyone file in and out, occasionally someone would stop and talk. I could do that where I was at, BP can be a MF sometimes but tonight it didn't bother me. I continued to watch and then I talked to the waitress who informed me that it was suppose to rain again. Yeah, Rain... If you want to call it that. It never just rains here in Texas. At least where I am at.
As I sat there I had a view off to the west and watched a storm system blow in. Gentle rains at first and then full throttle gushing downpours and horizontal winds. The lightening was very intense. At first it danced back and forth through the clouds and then flashes struck the ground with full force. The claps seemed to be a block away. There was no time in between when the light flashing and the thunder that followed. I decided that Denny's was much safer than my apartment. If it was as "interesting" as last night I didn't feel like going back to the apartment. That was not a safe haven for me considering what last night was like. Let me explain...
I received a call from a friend in McKinney last night that I needed to watch the news because there were tornado's in my area. I was walking in the door as we had this conversation. A storm had already past about 10 minutes earlier and I thought the worst of it was over. Hey, it was clear, what did I have to worry about? I was wrong. I turned on the television and it was nothing but news news news. The television station was running on emergency power and they talked about the 5 tornado's that had been sighted in the area.
As I watched I learned that one was coming up the road from me 7 miles away straight up the highway that I live on. Fearing the worst, I looked around for what I could use for shelter. I have a tennis court to the front and of course living on the second level of a apartment, all I could do was crawl in the bathtub with a mattress over me. It didn't matter because I knew the chances of getting through a tornado living on the second story were slim to none. Yes, I was in full panic mode. I will not lie about that. It was a chore in itself trying to get a queen sized mattress into the bathroom but I managed.
So, with television blaring, flashlight and cell-phone in hand I started making calls. Most locally to see if anyone had any good news. Everything that I heard was bad bad bad. By this time I was totally freaked. I made one last call to a friend of mine in Dallas. They never answered. I hoped that they were not having the same problems down there. I didn't know and at this point I could only hope they weren't. Maybe they were having the same problems with their phone that I was having with mine. It could be very possible. Needless to say, the storms passed, I got to wrestle the mattress back out of the bathroom and everything got back to normal. Of course they did. Otherwise I wouldn't be here to talk about it.
Thunderstorms here in Texas can be beautiful when viewed from a far... Though they can be brutal when you are in the middle of one. I don't recommend the latter to anyone.
T.