Wednesday night we had a tornado. My husband and 2 kids and I slept in our basement that night, and the wind and hail seemed to go on forever!At our house we just lost some tree branches, nothing we couldn't lift ourselves afterwards, and a section of our back fence. We might be able to nail it back up again. But neighbors lost entire trees...and a lot of those trees landed on power lines. Most of those trees were snapped in two, near the base, but some of them were pulled out roots and all! 20 miles north of us, some people's entire houses were destroyed! My house has been without electricity for 2 days now, and is still out of power now. Late last night, power was restored to everone directly across the street from us, but not to our side of the street! My office was without power yesterday, except for one main computer room in the basement with its own generator, but we still needed to stay and sit in the dark and answer the phones anyway, because the phones still worked. I'm back at work again this morning, and the power is on again here. The good news? From lighting my gas stove top, and numerous candles over the last 2 days, at age 40 I have finally learned how to light a cigarette lighter on the first try! I could never figure those things out until just now.

While we were sleeping in the basement during the worst of it, my 6 year old son kept insisting that Hurricaine Katrina had come to our state and we were going to get flooded out just like those people on tv, and based on the miserable storm going on outside at the moment, shaking our house, with non stop thunder, lightening, hail, rain and wind, it was hard to argue with him. Other than that they've both pretty much enjoyed the drama of having their schools closed, yesterday, and of spending our early mornings and evenings by candle light, listening to battery-operated radio news, and inspecting the damage around the neighborhood. I think I traumatized them early on though, because I spent the minutes before the storm hit for real , standing out on the street with all the other weather nerds , staring at the approaching shelf cloud as if it were a big Independence Day flying saucer. I just love that. I had to be dragged in to the basement against my will by my own children, because I am a bad role model.