East Tennessee Deluge

Tim noted the massive buildup in of water in Michigan. Todd(aka Pres) noted the desert like conditions of East Tennessee. I noted that my knee was more Michingan than Knoxville.

Tonight all that changed. We had a pretty nice storm: hail the size of nickels, a brief deluge, and high winds. In Missouri they call that Tuesday. The notable things about this storm were: my wife’s car now has a finish that looks as though it was hand hammered and the accumulation of hail. It looked like snow. It was an interesting evening, I enjoyed it cause I like big storms and watching everyone get all freaked out. Why? I suspect it was my time in Florida.

You live in Florida for awhile and you get pretty blase about storms. First off it rains near daily and secondly every year you go through the hurricane hype. The first few hurricanes really freak you out but after a couple of years you just call “last hot shower” as soon as the power goes out. Guy Serle will probably back me up.

Plus I lived in Tornado alley for awhile. Really bad storms there. Though what I really remember is not the storms but Dad sending us all down to the basement while the radio sqawked about the coming apocalypse. I wondered what he was doing topside so I climbed a stack of junk to look out that little below ground basement window once. What I saw was all the neighborhood Dads darting over to one guy’s garage using garbage can lids as cover. Then they just stood there watching the storm and drinking coors. Kinda killed the fear for me.

Since this is Memorial Day weekend President Todd will undoubtably head off camping. This sucks on two levels. First I wanted to catch Kill Bill vol 2 with him AND I wanted to borrow Fight Club per Tim’s suggestion. Todd buys a ton of DVDs and usually lets me borrow the ones I want to see. But he never offers up Fight Club, hell he won’t EVEN talk about Fight Club.

Of course the campgrounds will be very crowded this weekend but the Pres won’t let that stop him. He’ll get three wax covered matches and have his lovely fiancee drop him off somewhere near Blue Ridge Parkway. After that he’ll just walk around in the very remote woods for a bit and show up reeking of skunk just in time for work.

Sure he’ll have very strange stories to tell. Stories of the Wumpus Cat. Stories of strange tribes of mountain folk who speak in indecipherable languages and at least one story of finding some aging hippie in search of his “spirit guide” I remember the stories about Todd’s encounter with the Lake Hippy. The guy had business cards printed up saying “Lake Hippy” and everything. He was also convinced his spirit guide was a catfish, specifically an ancient monster catfish living near the Melton Hill Dam. The pres had recently taken free diving as some sort of weird hobby. He grabbed the poor lake hippy and drug him to the bottom in search of the annoited fish. Later it was decided that the Lake Hippies true spirit guide was a frog.

In any event I’m going to do my part to help the Pres’ odd strories gain some validity. I’m chucking SETI@home in favor of YETI@home. I suggest you do the same, after all SETI hasn’t found anything yet and as Mark Twain once should’ve have said “Just try for a little while, if nothing cool happens then get loaded. That way you’ve accomplished something”

Hmmm, I note I have been rambling quite a bit lately. I’ve gotta ask myself: How long until Tim pulls the plug? Get your bets in now.

Links of the moment:

Stairway to Gilligan Check this out. It really cracked me up. I could describe it…if I were a competent writer.

Something to drive the Pres a little deeper into the woods:

The Pres lives in a constant state of clown fear

Game Pick:
Surfs Up Well it’s nothing like actual surfing and the score to get to the next level seems near impossible but it is fairly amusing.

CKS/BL Tridiot rating: Sorry to report that I just can’t tell. Beth Lock and I worked late into last evening reprogramming a Hewlett Packard 48 GX with the needed complex formulae but I lost the password. So no Tridiot ratings until Beth e-mails.