Its gonna be a slow one...

OK, well at least the morning is. We'll see what happens after 1pm but its gonna be slow til then. At least we get a free lunch today since there's a meeting in the office - whoo-hoo!!

I *think* the kitty is getting better - I'm not sure. She still is making a bunch of trips to the litter box with nothing happening so I don't know. She's getting her medicine and pills and generally hating life when she has to do this but she's not so bad to deal with either. I hope its making a difference!!

Trying to think of anything else to write about at the moment. Nothing of interest going on this weekend at all.

Heard we're in for some nice big spring storms this weekend as is typical of Easter weekend. Isn't Easter weekend one of the biggest weekends (no matter when it is) for like tornados and general storm chaos? Is it Easter or Palm Sunday? I can't remember, but one of those weekends is historically bad regardless of if it occurs in March or April. I'm not a big fan of storms. Some people love 'em, but I really don't.

I have had a few bad storm experiences. Actually, every storm was somewhat of a bad experience for me growing up. My backyard out in the country looks just about like Dorothy's in the Wizard of Oz and that sort of freaked me out. What I mean is just country and barns and land... wide open spaces so to speak. Seeing black skys against that ... I don't like it. Had a couple of smallish tornados in my hometown but nothing of real damage - made a couple of trips to the basement though. Had some other tornados on some camping trips that were super scary. Had one driving experience alone at night by myself driving up to northern Wisconsin which was just horrible - I think I'm still shaking from that one and it was about seven years ago!!

I think the one that scarred me the most was camping one weekend in the farm lot at my great-grandmother's farm. OK .... I know that doesn't make much sense so here's the story:

My family still owns the original family land down in southern Illiois where my grandfather grew up. Anyway, when my great-grandmother moved out of her house (my great aunt/uncle took care of her for a few years before she was in a nursing home and later died... she lived to be 96 years old), when we went to visit the area we would stay in the old house. Well, eventually they started renting the house out and its like... where are we going to stay now? Well, my grandfather's cousin owns the other house on the lot and he allowed us to bring our campers/tents and just camp out in the farm lot. It was lots of fun - really! We brought family friends from time to time and made weekends of it. It was/is just a great place to hang out - totally rural, in the country, farm land, woods, ponds, lakes, etc. Its about a 45 minute drive from St. Louis.

The nearby towns are cute little towns - everyone (including myself) is of German decent. They all even still have this weird accent down there. My grandfather's cousin has it, even my grandfather's brothers had it... my grandfather does not which I always thought was kind of weird. They all do/did speak German fluently though. Anyway, the towns are nice - small - but each town has about 5 restaurants with huge outdoor beer gardens and fish fries every Friday night. Its a great time!! There are also some German bakeries around - although the original one that my dad loved and was super authenthic has been gone for several years. And, they're big on their "home killed" meats down there. There is this one butcher shop we always go to and stock up big time to take home - the best brautwurst on the planet!

But, I digress... its a great place to visit and sort of feels like a second (or is it third?) home to me. I think my sister and I had more fun hanging out at their town homecoming festivities one year than we have ever had at Corn Fest in our hometown. Gosh... when I think about it ... we really did make some special trips down there each year. We would go down for this German festival they had each summer ... Werschtsmart? Something like that? I'm not sure how to spell it? Anyway, it was a big brauts and beer fest... lots of outdoor games. Really fun stuff. We haven't been for several years as the group my family is honorary members of (thats another story) no longer put it on. Another group does now I think. Actually... I think this type of festival is quite common down there and there may be several during the year in all of those towns down there.

OK ... where was I and how did storms lead me into this story?? Yeah so one spring we were camping in the farm lot. This was one of the times that our family friends came with. My parents, my sis and I went one night early and the two daughters of our friends came with us too - their parents were coming the next day. I'd say I was about 12-13 years old. Anyway, this is when we had the pull-type pop-up trailer. The weather was so bad by the time we got there that there was no way we were even going to set the trailer up. It was horrible -black and windy and downright scary. I mean... I can't even begin to tell you how frightening it was. Before we went to *bed* (yeah right, like we were going to sleep) my grandfather's cousin's wife showed us how to get into their storm cellar. Now, I'm not talking about a basement here - I've done that a million times - I'm talking about outside, life the lid and get inside and close it behind you. How country is that?

So... me, my sis, and our two friends slept in the bed of my parents van. This was 1987 (I remember now) and my parents had a *real* van. One of those conversion vans and when the back seat folded down it created a bed that was probably somewhat between a queen to king sized bed so there was room for the four of us. My parents slept in the chairs. It was a horrible night, I don't think we got any sleep.

The next night my friends' parents were there and same thing. I can't remember exactly what happened now but basically another night of horrible weather and us kids ended up sleeping in the vans again - I was just too scared to sleep in the trailer. The trailer must have been up. I was in one of the vans (my friends' parents had one too) with one of my friends, all of the trees looked like they were gonna fall over - I remember that being the scariest thing about all of this. We look outside and we see my parents outside running. And we're like, crap, are they going to the cellar? Well, looking at it now... why did we think that? They never would have left us there like that if they were. But anyway, we thought they were so me and my friend come running out and run to the other van where my sis and other friend were staying. I guess my parents and my friends' parents were running outside because they were trying to put down the camper before it got shredded. So... it was another night sleeping in the vans. By this time, my nerves are shot. I was always uncomfortable with storms prior to this but this just sort of sealed the deal for me as far as making me afraid. I still look back on it as two of the worst nights of my life. I mean, it was really bad.

The next night they decided to pop up the trailer inside the barn. I'm not sure what good that would have been if there had been a tornado and the barn blew away with it. But anyway, it was windy as crap all day long but it was just wind. I don't remember there being a storm that night at all - of course. Anyway, its one of those stupid stories that I always tell everyone and its not anything that I'll ever forget!!

Back to something I mentioned earlier ... us being "honorary members" of this club. So the story on that is that my grandfather's family owned a bunch of land in this area and its handed down thru the generations. Anyway, this club *rents* (for a great deal) some of the land on the family land. They were allowed to do whatever improvements they wanted so they built a club house, shelter house, outdoor game/family area, and like 3-4 small lakes on it. Yeah... nice, right? It is nice. So now when we go visit over there we don't camp in the farm lot - we either camp at the club or we even put out some sleeping bags in the club and just sleep there. Its still a fun thing for me to do. I don't think I went down there last year but in the two previous years I did. Another thing that I like about going down there is that we go to St. Louis Cardinals games from time to time. I'm sort of hoping to get down there sometime this year so we can go to a game at the new stadium. That would be cool!

So sorry about the tangent here but I guess it gives a little more insite into my life ... and it gave me something to do ... so anyway, thats it for now!!