Not a good hair day!!

Hey guys! How's the weather in your hood? We've had some major storms this afternoon. Spring has obviously arrived by all the flowers and trees blooming, and nice mild temps we've had. But along with that comes all the strong spring storms, which often mean hail and tornadoes down here in the South. Do you guys up in New England/Northeast even have tornadoes? I don't think I've ever heard of a tornado raking across Connecticut, but there's probably not as many mobile home parks to demolish up there. I have so many memories of huddling in hallways in schools growing up, and even in the basement in college. Brent and I were talking about a particular storm in May 1995 today. It was about 5 months before he and I ever met. I was a senior in high school and was enjoying a nice senior half day at my fave Mexican restaurant with my two best friends when the storm hit. We were eating outside on the patio when the storm suddenly hit blowing all the plastic tables and chairs through the parking lot and the staff rushed everyone behind the bar and declared a party! We thought it was a blast. Of course my parents weren't so amused! Brent had his own story about that afternoon, and it's so strange to think that even though we were a couple hundred miles apart and had yet to meet that we both have memories of that same day.

Today we have the same memories though! All week long they've been talking about expecting strong storms on Thursday. When Pippin and I walked this morning you just knew it was coming. It was seriously windy and all the animals were nutty. Pippin hid all his treats today and wouldn't eat them until after we got home this evening. Sometimes he saves them for when we come home for lunch, but today he was stockpiling. I guess that's his contingency plan if we never come back. (occasionally he forgets about them all together and I find them in the strangest places.) We work 7.30-4.30, but it's usually closer to 5 when we leave. Around 4.45 as I was winding down a coworker's hubby called and said it was already starting to storm and power was out in a lot of the city. Brent and I had brought our gym clothes since an outdoor run seemed a bit out of the question, but we decided to go home instead. There was just something about being stranded, trapped or otherwise swept away in a twister at the corporate gym that just didn't sound like the best way to wrap up our time here on Earth. Sneaky Brent had already moved our car closer to the front at the office. I tried to take some pictures of the wind and rain, but they just didn't come out that well. I took some video Brent's going to upload through YouTube. Just as we got close to our subdivision the bottom fell out. You could see the black clouds moving across the road and you couldn't see further than two feet. I don't think the intensity really came out in my video. We were in the Jeep Wrangler, and you couldn't hear anything except the pounding rain and the 45 mph winds. Luckily our power was still on so we could drive right into the garage. Car and house alarms were going off up and down the street! Pippin seemed a bit freaked about the whole thing and once it calmed down a little I took him outside. He wasn't happy about the rain (which we also have on video). The storms calmed down and so far it looks like we don't have any trees down, just a ton more mulch displaced by the strong rains. Another line is supposed to move through in a few hours. I ended up doing my 6 miles tonight on our treadmill while watching a few more episodes of the Office we've downloaded.

It seems like the worst ones always come through as we're sleeping. A few years ago practically every night we had tornado warnings. And it was all just a couple of days before the CPA exam. I got where I slept with my exam admittance card on my nightstand and took it with me into the closet every time we had to find a "safe interior room" to bunker down in. If the house came down around me by God I would still be able to take the exam. Screw the wedding photos, vacation mementos, birth certificates - that exam pass was #1.

Saturday we have our stair climbing challenge. Have we practiced lately? Nope. That's TOTALLY unlike me - I am the queen of being overprepared. We don't have a good place to practice and doing our up-down repeats in our house aggravated my foot. (The down is the problem, not the up so the competition should be fine.) We're just doing it for fun and chalking it up as another athletic adventure. Audrey did hers last weekend (which ours doesn't even begin to compare to!) so I'm all pumped.

Oh, and Portland, OR is tops in my list of great cities to live in. We visited there in 2002 and I think it's awesome. Close to the mountains and the ocean, and it's full of so much artistic personality without being TOO enormous or crowded. Everyone just LOOKED athletic. We went to a great Farmer's Market and traveled throughout Oregon. I love it. We watched people windsurfing in the Columbia Gorge and were completely amazed. (It was perfect except for our Crater Lake experience which is a very long story that will have to wait for another day!!) Portland was also tops in a list of the best cities to walk in I saw this week.

Good luck to everyone racing this weekend and especially Jack! He's running a marathon near his home in Germany. I'm still waiting for my airline e-tickets so I can fly over and head up his support crew, I'm sure he MUST have sent them to the wrong email address. You know I'd be more than happy to jump in and run the last few with you!! His race is Sunday am, with the time change it starts at 4 am EST. YIKES! He'll have certainly accomplished a lot by the time I wake up Sunday!

Have a great weekend everyone!