Saturday,
April 5, 2003
Hailstones and rainstorms and cats, oh my!
Since I'm in Austerity Mode until next weekend (read; I'm poor), I decided to be a good girl and split my time this weekend between cleaning and getting some writing done. Upon checking my story register, I realized that I had three stories that only needed some minor tweaking before I could send them out again, so I spent the afternoon polishing those and either printing them out or emailing them off to various publishers. What with my bounce from Asimov's and the turnaround to Idiomancer, I now have six stories in circulation, and the laundry should be completely done by this evening. Talk about a productive Saturday.
However, the excitement didn't end there. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this, but when I get in writing mode you can set off a small nuclear device behind me and I won't notice. So it wasn't until Steve AIMed me to ask if I was getting hit by hail yet that I noticed we had a mother of a thunderstorm brewing outside. I immediately checked the radar and went, "Whoa" -- three big ol' severe storm cells, one right after the other, was going to march by just south of us.
So THAT'S why there were lightbulbs going off in my peripheral vision (my office has a southern exposure). I toddled into the living room and informed Lyndon of this new development -- we had talked about going out to dinner and maybe a movie, but what with threat of hail and all, it seemed like a good idea to change it to Domino's Pizza and split our time between CNN and the Weather Channel. Which was fine with me -- we'd spent the day slopping around in t-shirts and shorts, and I wasn't really in the mood to put on anything more formal.
I bopped out briefly to get some cash for the pizza, and noticed two new SUVs parked in the covered lanes at the bank across the street. This just goes to show that my time in Chicago hasn't completely deserted me -- my first instinct was to wonder if it was an ambush for people using the ATMs. It wasn't until a big ol' flash of thunder rocked the sky that I realized they were just trying to avoid hail damage. Yes, I'm paranoid -- this comes as a surprise?
Got back home, paid for the pizza, and watched the light show. The fabulous furbags had a very entertaining time watching the oncoming storms from our windowsills, right up until the point where the rain actually started. As soon as I finished closing windows, however, Jordan jumped into my arms, and JJ kept very close by to Lyndon. Which was good -- we would have been able to grab them and skedaddle if large funnel clouds decided to start hoovering around our apartment complex.
The funny thing
was, I'd had a dream just that morning about having to outrun a tornado in my
car. Go figure.