Regularly Scheduled Thurs Post

Monday night we were cooking dinner. Heard thunder in the distance. Five minutes later, the wind was howling, lightning was 3 seconds apart, rain was pouring, and the tornado siren was blaring. And like THAT'S not crazy enough, I wasn't even modestly dressed. No matter. I yanked Molly's 12 pounds of lard off the floor and ran down the stairs while D grabbed a cell and keys. We were down there just a couple minutes when D realized we left the stove on with something greasy sitting on it. Ensuing train of thought: "Fire worse? Tornado worse? Fire worse?..." D raced upstairs, turned it off, and was back in less than a minute.

Meanwhile, our neighbors and their baby came to join us. Atleast we met some really nice neighbors! They live cati-corner to us. And get this, they're from Japan. That made for some great, "Cool! Where'd YOU live?" conversation.

When the sirens stopped and the storm eased up, we went upstairs and looked at the weather on the 'net. Turned out, a tornado touched down nearby. The storm had been traveling 55 miles an hour. First distant roll of thunder to sirens was seriously 5 minutes. I'm from tornado alley, and I've never seen it happen that fast.

Half an hour later, we realized the window in the second bedroom was wide open. The blinds were down, but it has no screen. Water covered a fourth of the room. The wind had slung it everywhere. Six boxes that were long-term storage had to be emptied and their contents spread to dry. Five framed pictures were standing in water. Two were paintings my grandfather did. They were face-up on a table and the frames acted like pond walls. Nothing of real value was ruined, though one nice thing got a bit of damage. (If you read my last post, you know we're getting lots of practice spreading wet stuff out to dry.)
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Most of you know, all the pictures with our lovely mugs go on a Flickr account. Like free email, we don't pay for Flickr. However, all in one day, Flickr said my "freeness" will only last another 30 pictures, and Walgreens said I have to order photos or the account closes.

So this got me thinkin'. We've now spent 2 years not doing hard-copy pictures. Makes sense enough. They're just as likely to stay safe as hard-copy, and if you don't print them, you save loads of money! Nevertheless, if we'd have to start paying for Flickr anyway...

We've decided to print off some of our wedding pictures. We have a white satin photo album specifically for them, so we figure we'll use it. I'm also going to go through Flickr and erase most of the non-face pictures. So if any of you want to go through my pictures, run and do it!
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Last Thanksiving, we brought a large green suitcase back from D's parents' house. (Hi, Y'all!) It was full of his kid-stuff: toys, Bible Bowl awards, and Scout uniforms. This week, I finally unpacked it. It was a couple weeks after we returned that my feet clamped and morning sickness hit. I haven't been able to fully catch up since! Sure makes me wish I'd emptied it as soon as we got back - even though I really was busy at the time prepping for my own 'rents to come. Sheesh.
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I've been posting my head off lately. Y'all go review Flickr if you want to. I'll start pulling stuff down as early as Monday. Adieu.