Friday Five Stormy Weather Edition

From Martha

1) What's the most common kind of storm in your neck of the woods?
We get lots of thunderstorms and tornado warnings, watches and actual tornadoes. I love thunderstorms. When I was in seminary at SFTS, my first year. I woke up in the middle of the night to rattling dishes and a shaky bed. The next day everyone at lunch was talking about the thunderstorm. One guy had even driven up to Mt. Tam to watch the lightening. I said, didn't we have an earthquake last night? Why isn't anyone talking about that. Oh, was the reply, we have earthquakes all the time. I hadn't realized thunderstorms were unusual.

2) When was the last time you dealt with a significant power outage? A couple of years ago we lost electricity. More frustrating than anything else. My last big storm in Cleveland was in November when we got 40 inches of wet snow. Everything was down. We didn't have electricity for four or five days. No electricity means no heat. And then there was the day my son and I were driving down Mayfield road. And the lights went out. We had planned to go out to dinner downtown. We thought the outage was local but called the restaurant just to be sure. They were not going to open. We were part of that great midwest outage that went on for days.

3) Are you prepared for the next one? I figure I have more than enough food and water. I generally chuckle at all the people who fill up the grocery stores when the forecast is for a big storm. Most all of us have more than enough to survive several days. And if not, most of us could stand to go hungry for a few days.

4) What's the weather forecast where you are this weekend? I think actually a bit cooler. I am so tired of the hot weather.

5) How do you calm your personal storms? Right now retirement is doing well at calming my personal storms. I am doing the happy dance every two minutes. Meditation otherwise helps.