my day (so far)

• oversleeping yet still making it to work earlier than I normally do
• giving myself a bad paper cut almost immediately upon arriving at work
• giving myself a cardboard cut (on the same finger!) a few hours later
• becoming horribly frustrated with Adobe InDesign
• becoming horribly frustrated with some of my yearbook students
• returning to the office for lunch, only to discover that the kitchen had changed the menu from hamburger helper (not ideal, but acceptable) to beef & bean burritos (completely unacceptable)
• listening to Jim Brickman's new cd while trying to fix yearbook pages
• running across campus in a downpour . . . in full view of the senior English class
• coming home to a very dusty-smelling house, thanks to the window I left open this morning
• discovering Phillip LaRue's new cd (thanks to Sarah)
  
• preparing to go back to school for an evening of winter awards (my least favorite responsibility as speech coach) and yearbook
  

it rained and it poured for 40 daysies daysies

This is my kitchen table as of 10:30 p.m. Why? Because we had more storms. I was planning to have my family over for supper. I made baked chicken, fried potatoes, chocolate-peanut butter brownies, and iced tea. It started raining while I was cooking, but I didn't think much of it--just closed my windows, turned off my computer (I'm paranoid about it getting zapped!), and kept at supper. Just before 6:00, which is when my fam was supposed to arrive, my mom called to say we were under a tornado warning. Since I'm in a 2nd floor apartment, she wanted us to have supper at their house. So she and Steph drove over in the downpour, we packed up everything, and headed back to their house. Nothing happened except lots of rain--and we're currently (again!) in a flood warning. I have a terrible memory when it comes to these things, but it sure seems like we're having more rain and more storms than usual!

have you ever seen the rain?

That song has been looping through my head for the past several days. Well, one line of the chorus, anyway: "I want to know, have you ever seen the rain . . ." over and over and over! I think it's because it won't stop raining. Hmmm . . . maybe I should start singing "It's Raining Men"--it couldn't hurt :-)

We actually didn't have any rain today, which was really nice. There's lots of water just sitting around . . . some ditches had water in them a month ago. It just keeps raining! My parents' sump pump kicks on every three minutes or so. One of my coworkers said she has six inches of water in her basement! Boy, am I glad I live in a second floor apartment!

Some severe storms came through last night. Here in Nebraska, we tend to get rather blasé about storms because it seems we're constantly having severe thunderstorm and/or tornado warnings in the summer. The lightning started here around 5 p.m. . . . by that time, Kearney, which is about 1 1/2 hours west of us, had already been hit by a tornado. The same storm produced a tornado at Aurora, 20 minutes south of us. But when it was all said and done, we had rain--no hail, and no tornadoes. Sometimes, I just take for granted that God's going to protect us. Stephanie said she feels like Central City is invincible--we have warnings, but as far back as we can remember, we haven't had a tornado. Seeing the damage in Kearney and Aurora made me think about what I'd do if CC did get hit. And you know what? It's all just stuff. Would it be hard to lose my things? Of course! But life and the ones you love are so much more important than any thing you might own.

That said, last night I was much more concerned about being able to watch the season finale of LOST than about the threat of tornadoes (remember what I said about being blasé about storms?) Both the Kearney and Lincoln ABC stations were, with good reason, preempting programming in favor of storm coverage. Then the Lincoln station announced they would run the finale at 12:05 a.m. Of course, fanatics that we are, Val and I had to watch it. Then we had to discuss it for another 25 minutes. I got to bed around 2:45. Was it worth it? You bet!