You know the Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times?"

It looked like it was about to get interesting last night.

For the past couple of days they had been warning us about a massive storm sweeping across the Midwest and heading our way. Last night we sat aghast at the film of damage the storm had done as it crossed Tennessee, trailer parks mangled, an entire car dealership of cars picked up, flipped, and crushed, etc. The Weather Channel was showing fresh warnings for Alabama and Georgia and as we went to bed the storm had just hit Huntsville and Chattanooga. (James went out on the deck and took the bird feeder down.)

It was hot and stuffy and it took quite a while for us to get to sleep. Next thing we knew it was a little after four and about four things were going on at once: the weather radio snapped on with a tornado warning, lightning flashed, a big gust of wind blew rain and cold air through our bedroom window and set the shades flapping, and there was a thump from the living room as the gust blew the lamp over.

I had to use the bathroom anyway and watched the tall thin trees outside the window jerk and sway. The wind had a funny whine to it. Just as I commented about the wind, James said, "Get dressed now." You betcha.

So we got up and woke up Pidgie—Wil was already barking at the thunder—and watched television for a tense half-hour. When we turned the set on there in orange-red on the radar was this perfect hook-shape mass passing over us.

Thank you God, that's exactly what it did, passed over. We went back to bed about 4:45 a.m. The neighborhood doesn't seem to have been touched, but James said there was some damage near the Kmart at the Big Chicken and the chiropracter near where we used to live had his roof covered with blue tarp and his sign blown down when I went past there a little while ago.

Just another reason to hate summer coming...

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 12:38:00 PM

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