FlishFun.com

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.

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.