FlishFun.com

Nothing says fun like a last minute emergency trip, right?  Well, we’re off to Texas tonight to see Jessica’s family because her mother is ill again, and while most likely it’s not life-threatening, she is worreid and has requested all family come down and see her as soon as possible.  Luckily I’m feeling better now, and while not 100%, I should be well enough to make this trip without feeling too bad.

It’s a 12 hour trip and I’m going to be driving straight through… fun, eh?  I’ll try and update my blog while I’m down there (bringing my spare wireless router and our laptops), but no promises as I have no idea what everyone’s plans are.  One sad thing is that I used to live just 45 minutes away from where we’re going, and I don’t think I’ll be able to visit (both Jess and I have to be back to work on Monday).  Oh well.  The bright side of the trip is that I’ll get to see my niece, which will be nice, as we’ve yet to be able to see her (she just turned 5 months old a couple days ago).

Fun times… more when I get time!

Last night Jessica got to meet one of her favorite authors, Janet Evanovich, who just released her 14th book in her “Stephanie Plum” series.  While I’ve not read any of the books (not too big on the Romance/Mystery genre myself), Jessica is absolutely in love with them, so this morning I went and waited in line at the Borders store that she was appearing at.  Seems they’ve been having huge turnouts (as she’s quite well known) and are making people wear wristbands to determine where they get to be in line.

Luckily we were one of the first people in line to see her (15th, actually!) so we were in and out real quick… based on how packed the place was there were probably people there for hours.  You can see a pic I took of the crowd here (a lot of people showed up):

And of course, here’s a pic of Jess with Mrs. Evanovich and her signing her book:

All in all, it was an eventful night, but Jess is happy and she got to meet one her favorite authors, so that makes me happy I could do that for her.  For any of you wondering if Janet will be coming to your town, check the site below for more info:

Janet Evanovich Tour Dates

Happy reading!

It’s hailing right now (I just took this from the hail on my balcony):

Yeah… storms are bad (supposedly we had the small hail), already had at least 5 tornadoes reported with (so far) four or five fatalities at a Boy Scout Camp (Little Sioux Scout Ranch).  We’ll have to check on the car when it all stops.  The news just reported that the street that runs by my work has flooded over the bridge there… it’s raining at about 2 inches an hour now.  Ugh. Here’s a shot from the storms I took two days ago:

I swear, it’s never ending here.  More if anything develops (power keeps flickering… dunno how long it’ll last).

I wrote this on the forums last night at around 2:50 in the morning:

It’s now 2:56 AM, but I’ve been up since 2.  Why?  Tornadoes.  I hate this State.  The Tornado siren started going off and woke us up… “Hi there, Weather Channel!”:

So, supposedly a tornado just ripped the roof off of a Wal-Mart (or Target, they’re getting mixed reports) as well as destroying 1 (up to 3… mixed reports) houses that are a few streets away from us.  They’re not quite sure yet.

Yay.  Why don’t these things happen during the day?  I swear, it seems it’s been almost every night now for the past week.  Ugh.

Okay… it’s 3:00 now… maybe we can go to bed.  They said the Tornado Warning has expired… only Severe Thunderstorm Warnings now.  Wonderful.   :p

So, today Jess and I had a couple places to go and we decided to go check out the damage, if any.  Well, it turns out there was a tornado, it was an EF-2, and it missed our apartment by about 1.5 miles.  Yikes.  Here’s some pics from the news sites:

And here are a couple pics Jess and I took while out (note the “Wal-Mart is closed, sign… seems the tornado actually hit the store.  Also note the missing roof and walls of that carwash and the missing gas tank at the gas station):

The police had cordoned off the neighborhoods that were most destroyed and were only letting in those that lived there (good for them, I say!).  Anyway, I’m starting to hate the Mid-West… stupid tornadoes.

Oh!  One last bonus… all the wind and rain seemed to undo whatever they did to fix the roof and all last night we had to deal with “drip, drip, drip, drip” again.  While not as bad as what happened to everyone else, still quite an annoyance.