FlishFun.com

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.

This last weekend Jess and I decided to visit the 1st Annual Omaha Health, Wellness, & Fitness Expo and I’m thinking the name should be changed to the Omaha Scam, Snake Oil, & Nonsense Expo. Really. First, here’s what the website had to say about it:

Over 10,000 attended the 1st Annual Omaha Health Expo. The Largest Health Expo in the Region expanded through both the Exhibition Hall and the Mancuso Cenvention Center with over 250 exhititors and 50 Seminars, 4 continous Seminar Rooms and 1 Keynote Speaker Stage where we heard from Experts on ways to improve our lifestyles, live longer, better, and happier. This Show again is positioned to kick off the Healthy Season next year on April 25th & 26th, 2009. Mark your Calandars to attend again and Participate in the Walk on Saturday and the Bikeride on Sunday.

Sounds pleasant, informative, and full of healthy stuff! So, what all did we see? Well… we had Crystal Healers:

Quantum Biofeedback:

Psychics (only $30 for a reading!):

Fortune Tellers (complete with crystal balls and tarot cards):

Aura Painting:

Hypno-Yoga (Yoga while Hypnotized, of course!):

Fairies (for some reason):

Homeopathic Remedies (of course that’d be here):

Cell phone “invisible radiation” protection through special “chips”:

And much more! Here’s just a small part of the expo floor… I took the liberty of highlighting the “non-scam” parts:

Can you make ‘em out? They are Avon, and American Family Insurance. Now, there were actual medial professionals there, but it was about 10 - 15 “non-traditional” healing booths for every one medical one. The worst part? Every booth that was sponsored by a hospital was empty, while the others promising everything from stress removal from conception (that’s what the Quantum Biofeedback people promised) to berries that cured all disease (I didn’t get a shot of that one) were packed.

I’ll have to go into some of these in more detail later (like I did with the whole Ion Cleanse thing), but I’m feeling wiped out at the moment. Let’s just say there was almost no health, wellness, or fitness here… it was very sad to see people in wheelchairs looking at some of these presentations with hope in their eyes. The people running the booths brought in quite a bit of money, and you just know they’re just feeding on the hope of the elderly and the sick. It was very sad to see, but what can you do about it? No matter what you tell them, hope will usually win out over facts and science. Oh well…

Just a quick rant about people’s behavior in public.  Jess and I went to the Omaha Zoo this weekend and were constantly being pushed, bumped, run into, and bothered by children.  I wouldn’t be complaining too much if their parents were even attempting to rein them in, but most couldn’t be bothered.  Wanna feed McDonalds to the animals?  Sure, why not.  Want to open the door marked “DO NOT ENTER” next to the Mountain Lion cage and go in?  Sounds like a plan.  Stick your hand behind the fence to the Monkey Cage?  More power to ya.  These parents seemed to think that their children had the right to run off and do whatever they wanted, as they had already paid admission.  It was completely ridiculous.  You go to the zoo to see the animals, not turn into them.  It took me snapping a picture of one just to clear our path and get through:

No wait, sorry… that’s the wrong photo.  That’s a cute picture of a Sloth hanging from a tree… here’s the one I was thinking of (you can see how I almost mistook one for the other):

That’s right, this girl caused a traffic jam of people because she decided to climb on things in the middle of a path.  Were her parents around?  Not that we could tell.  Did she even see the signs saying to not climb on things?  Doubt it.  It really took me taking a picture for her to run off down the way.  It just drives me nuts.  I wish places like the Zoo had an “Adult Swim” type day.  You know, the second Tuesday of every month, no one under 21 allowed, or something similar.  I know I can’t be the only one that feels this way.  I’ll admit, it’s not just the child’s fault, but if the parent thinks that this is their vacation time, it is the only solution I have.  So annoying.

Last night Jess and I went to see Cirque du Soleil: Saltimbanco at the Qwest Center here in Omaha, and let me tell you, it was wonderful. Now, if you’ve seen Cirque du Soleil on TV and you think “My God, this is boring,” then you are just like me. This is what you need to understand: Cirque du Soleil is 100 times more entertaining in person. I could happily go the rest of my life without seeing it on TV ever again, but I could also happily go see on their shows live once a month.

Now then, I don’t really have any pictures of the show because it is not allowed. At all. They said any cameras would be confiscated and you wouldn’t get them back, as people using the flash could distract the artists and cause chaos. Sadly because of this, they won’t allow you to use a camera without a flash, just in case. I did manage to get 3 blurry cell phone pictures, though. The first photograph is the stage prior to the opening of the show:

You’ll see it is all covered with a sheet and looks almost carnival tent-ish. The stage remained like this until the show “officially” started. What do I mean by that? Well, as with most Cirque du Soleil productions, before the show really got started, the audience was messed with for about 10 minutes. Luckily everyone was a good sport about it and seemed to enjoy what was happening. Once that finished, the show really got started. I was going to write how it began, but Variety did a much better job at an intro for me:

Spooky masked, long-snouted clowns who look as if they might have arrived from outtakes of “Brazil” weave through the audience creating hilarity as a blue Alice-in-Wonderland cat-like mime prances on a shrouded white stage. The shroud is sucked through a hole in the sky as a rock band, beneath a stained-glass-like green canopy, launches into a pulsating song, and a caped, snake-haired master of ceremonies enters.

This is exactly what it was like. The band was amazing… seriously. I think that was a big part of what made the whole show so wonderful. The singer they had was amazing as well, she had a mesmerizing voice and didn’t lose the beat at all the entire show. In fact all the performances went perfectly with the exception of two. The juggler lost 2 of his balls when attempting to juggle 7 at once (after picking them back up he managed to get right back on track), and one of the “bungee-trapeze” artists missed his bar and took a minute to bounce back up to it. That’s pretty good, having just two minor goofs in an entire show like that.

My favorite part had to be the twin trapeze artists. Seeing them do absolutely everything in sync was an amazing thing to behold. I’m not very good at describing things like this, but apparently neither was Variety:

17-year-old twin sisters Karyne and Sarah Steben perform 50 feet up on a single trapeze like synchronized swimmers of the air.

I honestly suggest you go see this show, the entire thing is magical and hard to put into words. Here are my final two shots, showing the stage without it’s cover (I warned you it was blurry!):

The entire show was 2.5 hours, with a 15 minute intermission. I keep saying it, but I highly recommend it.