Gaston Conquers

I thought my biggest problem was going to be getting my trash out. HOW wrong was I??

So, it seems Gaston decided to dump 14 inches of rain on us!! I had the most insane night!!

First, I got stuck in the elevator as I tried to leave my office. The power went out just after I got on and I wound up stuck between floors. Two sheriff deputies and the building manager had to rescue me ~ not a pleasant experience.

Then I embarked on the four and a half hour journey home. A good part of the city flooded and at one point I found myself trapped with washed out roads in all directions. Having a rental car in no reduced my temptation to attempt to cross the flooded roads, but I did know better than that!!! I decided to amuse myself by taking pictures of the flood waters...

By 9pm, I thought I was going to lose it ~ I had gone 4 city blocks in one hour... I got paged by a coworker for some information for the shelters we were opening ~ mandatory evacuations because of flooding. Turns out all the East/West roads were closed except for one and not the one I was stuck on...

I've finally gotten home which really didn't seem like it was ever going to happen....

Alright, I'm exhausted... going to bed....

Gaston Cometh

So, the remnants of Tropical Storm Gaston have hit this afternoon and it's been pouring down rain and apparently there have been some tornadoes touching down in the counties around the city...

Right now, it's just sheets of water coming down outside my window and I am not looking forward to driving home in this ~ especially with the rental car I have this week. (note to self: find windshield wipers immediately)

I'm realizing now that I should have taken out my trash this morning before I left for work as I'm not going to want to be doing it this evening. Even if the rain stops, it will still be a whole lot of wet grass to trapse through. Too bad I don't have a second date lined up...

Grrrrrrrr....

Okay, still in a foul mood today...

I have ridiculous cramps and I'm on the conference call about brucellosis and the speaker keeps going on and on about spontaneous abortion in cattle and dogs. Don't want to be concentrating on that part of the anatomy, thank you very much! Not to even mention, that I don't think there are any cows among my constientuency!

Of course, after the graphic description of what happens when a cow gets infected with brucella, she bothers to mention that they're all vaccinated now. Good of you to mention!

Alright, I'm cranky and PMSing and whatnot. I'm using enthralled in science for the sake of science, but I'm just so stressed about this drill from hell and I can't bear to be spending/wasting my time on something that is irrelevant for said enormous event!

And now we hit the comedy part of the lecture. We know brucellosis is a bioweapon.

How? Because we made it into one!!

Thank you US Army for advancing the means of killing people!

a new dating plan

So I just spent an hour and a half talking on the phone with an old friend who I haven't really seen that much of in years. He's over in Europe and probably getting divorced and hopefully coming back to the U.S. So we were talking about relationships and how the utility of men has been decreasing over the years and how I've positioned myself to not really need a man and exactly what utility he's capable of providing and how one would go about demonstrating these attributes while dating. (His main utility, by the way, appears to be killing spiders!!)

Since I already own a house and inherited a very nice diamond engagement ring, I'm not looking for the usual matieralistic things. So, this is what he's come up with for me. On any given first date, I should arrive with a particularly tightly closed pickle jar and request assistance opening it. The second date should include a test of my date's ability to unload my dishwasher and take out my trash ~ it's very important that I grade form and not just functionality, since in the beginning just getting the job done may be satifactory, but 20 years down the road, technique is going to matter. The third date will include moving furniture and killing wasps (I have no problem killing spiders, but I'm allergic to insect stings) ~ it's important here to grade not the ability to take directions, but the instinct to already know what I want, again, 20 years down the road... I could go on, but I think that's enough for now....

Some things are just wrong!

7am mandatory staff meeting.

I have proof that there is evil in the world. It requires me to attend a meeting at 7am on a Monday morning...

I cannot even begin to describe all the many levels on which this is wrong....

Of course, I couldn't fall asleep last night. I was definitely awake to see 4:00am on my clock and I'm honestly not sure I had been sleeping before that.

But I'm bright siding things. There was no traffic at 6am!! There was a 3 to 1 barrista to customer ratio at Starbucks when I got there. (they still gave me the wrong scone) And I had my choice of parking spaces when I got to the office!!

And did I mention how VERY early I am leaving today?

All that said.... there may not be enough caffeine in the world to make this a habit....

You gotta love Dad

My dad has been visiting for the last few days. He's been visiting my new car, I believe, more than me. Alright, not really. He did schedule the visit shortly after I purchased said car, so it is awfully suspicious. I guess that what happens when you buy some new fangled automobile like a hybrid....

I can't complain about my parents. They're wonderful. They would do anything to help my sister and me. They are fiercely loyal and protective and they've supported us through everything, good stuff and bad.

Over dinner last night, my father and I were discussing the dolls my sister and I had as children. He was saying he didn't remember our dolls having a particularly long life expectency and there were a number of headless dolls that we were unwilling to part with. He's absolutely right! Donnie Osmond was the only male "Barbie" we had, so when his head was lost, his social calendar was not limited. Then there was the Dorothy Hamill doll, or should I say dolls, I apparently went through 4 or 5 of them. You could take her skates off, but when you went to put them back on, you would break her legs in the process. And apparently the learning curve a bit steep on that one as I needed to break at least three sets of legs to figure that out for sure...

Then, of course, there's my sister's favorite story about me as a child. My father bought me this beautiful doll with blinking blue eyes. She had long blond hair that probably went down to her feet or close to it and she was called Angel doll or something like that. I named her Stanley. Apparently I'd always liked the name. Stanley met her demise when I decided to bath her with Crest. But as my father pointed out last night, she never did have any cavities....

Geez, Louise...

So all day at work yesterday they had us all a twitter...

Hurricane! Hurricane!!

We might open shelters!! We might have to close bridges! Roads might wash out! Trees may come down!

Open the EOC!! Get into emergency mode!! 3-5 inches of rain!! Gusts of 50+ mph wind!!

It's no Isabel, but we need to be prepared!!

Then what happens? Nada...

Charley never makes it West of I95. We don't even get much rain!!

And, yes, I'm a little disappointed ~ not that we really were in need of any action right now, but if they were going to run around getting us all worked up....

Wait, is this what it feels like to be the naked guy when the naked girl says, "you know, I just don't think I'm ready yet"?

Uhhhh????

Okay, I am officially brain dead....

I went to a meeting this morning, a week early. As I was trying to fall asleep last night, I became convinced that I had this meeting first thing in the morning. My palm has been doing this thing where it resets itself instead of recharging, so my calendar was wiped out. Anyway, I was the only one at this meeting. Not so much accomplished.

I've gone on about my day in a truly spacy manner, doing things like responding to a coworkers question of "Do you know Audrey's last name?" with "Audrey who?" And so on and so forth... It's a very good thing there's nothing particularly vital going on today....