I really need to find the buttonholer for the 201. I am not attempting buttonholes by hand.

It's only late July and already it's dark out when I get up. No wonder winter gets so depressing.

It's too goddamn hot. It's been in the 90s and will continue to do so. Even in our dark house it gets uncomfortably hot when it's that hot outside.

I need to do that muxtape for prettyh. I also need to start on the alphabet meme responses, though I was kind of waiting for arafel to get back and claim a few letters.

It's hot in here right now, and ForecastFox says it's already 70 outside. Bleh.

Q!

Q*Bert doesn't like thunder. There's a small patch of storm over us right now, and it's thundering a little. Q is agitating around the house, periodically ending up in here and trying on various hidey-holes for size. I tried picking her up but she wasn't interested.

I watered the plants around 6:30, thinking that the sky was getting a little iffy, no matter what the Internet said (the severe thunderstorm watch had been cancelled). After dinner we decided to go for a walk and made it a couple of blocks--pointing at the dark clouds gathering in the west and north--and then shortly after passing Brian's house we decided we'd better head for home and maybe just go a couple blocks in the other direction. We took 8th St. home and felt the winds that come with the leading edge of the storm. After I got a couple of photos of the park behind the house it started to rain, so we came home and sat on the front porch watching the weather and trying to get photos of the rain until I ran the camera's batteries out. At least the neighbors probably won't think we're the Addams Family for watching thunderstorms, because Carol and her daughter and granddaughter come outside every time it storms too.

Rocket doesn't like thunder.

( SEPARATED AT BIRTH??? )

Also we're due for more thunderstorms today, and you can find a group on Facebook for damn near anything.

Boy, we just keep on failing our saving throws against meterological ass-whoopings. Charles even got to see straight-line winds in action.

But we did get out of work a half hour early due to power failure.

Now that the storms and rain are done for a bit (there was footage on the news last night of about all of Johnson County under several feet of water... in some places houses [presumably the one-story ranches that are so popular here] are up to their eaves), it's right back up to 90° Fahrenheit and 147% humidity. I have some windows open in an attempt to take advantage of the wind, but I think I may just be letting the heat in. We have both bedrooms pretty well air-conditioned, so I guess if we have to we can take the laptop up there and turn the master bedroom into the upstairs living room. :P

Guess what the weather is doing right now.

And apparently from the storm last night, the lights in the music room are now not working. The outlets in that room are working, but not the lights.

WTF.

That was almost... kind of disappointing. We heard the sirens start up and checked the radar... HOLY SHIT there was a giant storm the size of Indianapolis coming this way. The wind started, the rain started, the lights went out; we went out on the porch with party mix and lawn chairs. Nothing real dramatic happened, just wind and rain. There's a second band, just green, coming, and a tornado watch until midnight, but compared to the storm this week, this was nothing.

Time for some damn Benadryl. Ugh.

The thunderstorm that woke me up at 3 AM last night was like a 3" salute compared to the firecracker that was yesterday morning's storm. (Another firecracker in progress at the moment... we're under a flash flood warning, a tornado watch, and a special weather statement about strong storms.) Charles says Q*Bert does NOT like loud thunderstorms! I assumed she would therefore follow him to bed, but she's still curled up in the lee of some stacks of dialysate.

She also has one squinty eye. It was all runny when I got home last night; we decided to give her through today to let it clear up before we start getting the vet involved. It looks cleaner and less goopy now, but she's keeping it more closed, poor little squinty girl. According to the internet, the most common cause of conjunctivitis in cats is herpes. Okay.

The thunder seems to have passed and Q is now sleeping.

I went to bed early, around 9 or so; Charles got up from his nap at that time. (His back is sore from cleaning the garage). He woke me up around midnight and said, "I heard explosions and there's a big black cloud hanging over downtown." I thought, Indy or Anderson? because I don't wake up well, and he said he was going to see what was going on.

One of the factory buildings was burning.

Now we've got a hell of a thunderstorm going on outside--it sounds like it's absolutely pouring. I hope the power stays on long enough to leave for work, I don't want to have to try showering in the dark.

I was sure I posted about driving into Indy just ahead of the tornado in the late summer of 2002, but I sure can't find it now. Anyway, we had a pretty good storm here in Anderson last night--thunder and lightning and the works. Indy, on the other hand, had one hell of a storm hit, with a tornado or two briefly touching down on the east side right where the 2002 tornado struck. Coming back from Indy today we saw billboards shredded on I-70. We got off on Route 9 and were stopped not far along by ROAD CLOSED signs. We took a detour around and found ourselves in the middle of a path of devastation. It seemed to have targeted trees--big, mature trees were snapped off at ground level or a few feet above. (I'm having trouble picturing the force involved in making air do that.) Limbs were broken off. Only once we got near the end of it did we see siding scattered in fields and what was apparently once a dilapidated barn (fairly common out here) that was now a pile of kindling. Damn.

Maybe our neighbors on the north side of Indy were right about Anderson being a safe haven. So far we've been lucky.

We have a freeze warning for Wednesday morning.

I don't feel well. My temperature is 98.9 and my pulse is 92--not normal.

This week is going to suck.

I think we might have to turn the furnace back on today--apparently doozer4200's cold front has arrived. My fingers are cold.

Today I'm going to attempt to make Alton Brown's protein bar recipe, assuming I still have enough dried fruit left after nom nom nomming on it last night. Yum. Also I may make a batch of the muffins on the back of the oat bran box.

I would also like to get some photos of my red hat (which I un-lost yesterday) and some of the nifty yarns that tpau gave me. Then I need to clear the camera's memory chip so it's ready for the fireworks demo this weekend.

Our basil plant in the kitchen is starting to look quite happy again. I'm not sure I dare to leave it out overnight just yet, despite 80+-degree temperatures during the day (basil can't stand cold), but I may start putting it out while I'm at work. Now I just have to learn how to trim it so it'll get all nice and bushy again instead of spindly and leggy like it is now.

My blood pressure has been unusually low (say, below 115/85) pretty consistently for a couple weeks. On one hand this would be good, but I've been having trouble with lightheadedness, especially in the morning, and it gets old. Also my appetite is maybe not what it could be (or it could be my imagination), but if this really is the case, I could at least be losing a little weight. :P

KITTY TONGUE!

I woke up to kitty paws at some ungodly hour this morning. I didn't look to see whose paws they were--based on the weight I think they were Rocket's--but just pushed them off me because OW.

Remember when Heath Ledger died? God forbid you said anything irreverent about it. I didn't hear anyone getting bent out of shape over the "cold dead hands" jokes when Heston died, though (or maybe I just move in the wrong circles for)--I call discrimination!

Also, why is it in the 80's when it's still April?

So I spent a week in Los Angeles, earthquake capital of the country, right? Nothing.

It was slightly after 5:30 AM. Charles had just come back from the bathroom or downstairs or somewhere. I was awake because my alarm had recently gone off.

So we're lying there and the bed is moving, short, rhythmic, back-and-forth movement (no comments from the peanut gallery, please), as if a cat is scratching with its back legs. I raise my head... no cats. I hold very still--the movement continues. I meep at Charles in confusion. He feels it too. EVERY SINGLE GHOST MOVIE EVAR goes through my head.

Charles suggests an earthquake. I get out of bed because I have to get up, and also I'm starting to get weirded out. Check a couple of news sites, and indeed, there was a quake about 200 miles southwest of here. I've slept through every other single earthquake either here (there was one maybe... three? years ago, when I was temping at ATA) or in Maine. Huh. Now I'm vaguely curious what it would have felt like if I'd been standing on the floor.

The cats weren't particularly agitated. Q jumped up on the bed looking for attention almost immediately afterwards. Rocket was sleeping on the (clean) laundry, and Chyna was looking for breakfast. Don't know what Calico Guest Kitty (long story) was doing.