So this afternoon around 2pm I get a call from an aunt of mine in Indiana. She was asking about my mom. I was like, I think she is okay. Then they tell me they say the reports about a tornado on the news that hit Murfreesboro. So I get a slight bit panicked as I start looking up all the news stories. I tell my aunt I'll call her back.

So I try calling my mom's house. No answer. I then remember that she doesn't have a corded telephone anymore and the cordless doesn't ring once the power goes out. So I just think there is power outages, no big deal.

I then find a story that mentions a road name that I knew. I knew it because it was only 2 streets over from my mom's house. So I call my sister. She calls my mom's boyfriend and gets him mobilized. I wait about an hour to hear from him, and then decide the rest of my day was shot. I also figured that either my mom needed help, or at least a big hug. So I look over traffic reports and formulate a plan on getting to her house.

I start running towards the side of Murfreesboro that is away from the interstate figuring that would buy my a little less traffic. And it did. I get fairly close to her house when I run into the big blockade that stopped everyone from getting in. So I quickly found a side street to park the car along, and started walking. Little did I know when I started off, I was walking right through the center of the tornado path. I have only a vague idea of the direction I need to be going. I don't know for certain. I end up getting through the destruction and notice another street name I know, it is this little L shaped road that is across the street from my mom's house. From there I walk down and get my first glimpse of mom's house. Looks fine. I walk down to the creek to see if I can cross it. Nope, water is too high and swift. I ended up walking around to a road with a bridge.

I finally get around to my mom's house and knock on the door. It takes a second, but she comes to the door. By that time I am fairly winded and very sweaty. All I can do is hug her. Seems she only had to pick up a single piece of insulation that fell in her yard.

Wasn't but a little while later that her boyfriend came rolling up. He spent over an hour trying to drive in and get redirected by the cops. He had given up and rode his bicycle in.

We later drove out for dinner. On the way back to drop me off at my car, we saw the damage on Thompson lane. That was just scary.

Anyways. She is fine. people maybe 5 blocks away lost houses. Some completely off the foundation. I've seen pictures of many of the destroyed houses. It was brought home with me walking under downed lines trying to see what my mother needed.

Edit--
Forgot to add. My cousin that is stationed in Italy heard about the storms and had called his mother in Indiana. So when we found out my mom was okay, we had to call all over the world to let people know she was okay.

Current Mood: relieved

I thought I had posted here, but realized it was in a private mailing to another friend.

So here goes another update on the chain mail hobby.

( Saving those uninterested from a lot of needless reading )

So I was checking in the status of someone I wanted to talk to on IRC. Doing the whois on someone I hadn't opened a message window sticks it in the same window that the system messages go. So I took a moment to look at the messages that scrolled by. I really liked this quote. So much I had to post it here.

"first glance it looks like we've fallen victim of a case of 'bored dimwit with more bandwidth than sense'."

While I don't know the person who caused that statement, I know too many that fit that bill.

Since my girlfriend had off Monday, she went to a craft store and thought she would help me along on my experiment into chain mail by buying me some jump rings. She bought be 2 bags of 9mm and 2 bags of 6mm rings.
( Saving those who Don't want to hear about this from seeing a full browser page of my story )

Tags: hobby chainmail
Current Mood: accomplished

Was at the mall last night with the girlfriend. By the time we made it back around to Barnes and Noble for the last of our looking/shopping we both were busting to use the bathroom. While I held our bags in the area outside the bathroom so she could use it first, I see this book on chainmail. I had been slightly interested in it before, but as I open it up, they are showing off jewelry made of mail. I was getting really interested.

Just as I was looking through the book, Dee comes out and it is my turn to use the bathroom. She asks about the book and I hand it to her. When I come back out she starts asking about my interest as we look at the book. She was getting very interested. As it turns out, she has done chainmail before. In fact, it seems that just a day or so before when we went to her parents house, she grabbed the tool box with all the pliers and some rings and brought it back to my house.

So there went one of the big expenses on getting started on chainmail. She already owned most the tools, and probably more than enough for me to get started. We sat in the Starbucks for a while and I read the begining of the book. After that, we went home. I then sat at the computer and made my first order of jump rings and such for me to start my first project. We will see how my patience is for this hobby, I could see doing a lot of playing with it.

Of course Dee is all kinds of excited that I might be interested in making jewelry.

Current Mood: amused

So at 1:05pm tonight I sent a complaint email back to the response email from yesterday. I then came here to rant. Finally I was back to doing work. As soon as I lifted my head back up from work, there is a response to my latest email to comcast support. This response actually came back in just over an hour. Nothing of any substance in it. And from the subject line, it looks like they create a new serial number for every email going out. Not sure if they are actually being put into a nice ticket yet or not.

So now I have sent back another email to them asking if they have access to my previous mailing or if that was lost. I also asked them if they wanted me to go into more details and if they could accept attachments so I could show them my data.

Lets see how long this takes to get a reply now.

I know everyone who has even heard of Comcast knows that their customer service sucks worse than the service or even the price we have to pay for said service.
( Saving your screen realestate from my rantings )

Tags: comcast incompetence
Current Mood: angry

Okay, so I am spreading this url from one friends list to another. Funny enough, if it wasn't for Dem and her talking about Luke's love of bacon, I probably wouldn't have really looked at this.

Bacon Apple Pie recipe

Yes, someone used bacon to make the weaved topping for a apple pie, and is sharing the recipe.

Tags: bacon pie
Current Mood: amused

I had parked my car in a different spot of the driveway this weekend to make getting in and out of my back door and to the swing easier/nicer. Had company and was treating them to smores on the firepit just off my deck with the swing for those wondering.

Anyways. I go out to the car this morning and jump in. I look through the window and I see this mass that makes me think it is a THICK bird crap right in my line of vision. I start the car and contemplate the wipers and the likely hood of just smearing it all over the windshield and how ineffective I thought the washer fluid was going to be.

While that is going through my mind, I notice the bird crap had eyes. I then further realize it is a frog on my windshield. I was kind of happy I didn't hit the wipers then. For as much as I hate their chirping outside my bedroom window in the spring early summer, I don't want them dead.

So I get out and relocate the frog off of the car before going to work. Maybe a little good karma for the morning, but it was cute.

Current Mood: contemplative

Okay, so Mirage had me looking at torchwood information before going home from work. So I ran across this youtube clip on a torchwood blog. Ohh boy.