Midweek Meandering

I realize I’ve been quite for a bit. It’s strange because I’m not really trying to get a big audience and yet I end up feeling a little guilty if I go a couple of days without posting. Have to keep reminding myself that this isn’t something I have to do and to not try and force myself to do this when there are no good ideas floating in my head.

Had some nasty weather in the area last night and I tuned into this guy who likes to live stream during bad weather. Find it is more reliable than the local news. The storms stayed away from us but a tornado did hit the place where I grew up. Weird hearing locations and places I was familiar with. I know there was some damage but hopefully no loss of life.

It wasn’t the first time that area had been hit by a tornado. I remember being in college (in a state far, far away) and I was eating dinner and, for some reason, the news mentioned a tornado going right through downtown. Not really the news you want to hear. This was in the olden days before cell phones and other options for instant communication.

Anyway, I finished as quickly as I could and rushed back to call home on the landline. There really wasn’t any risk since we didn’t live close to where the tornado was but there was still that need to hear the right voices. And, of course, everyone was fine. I tried again later to get more details but, in those days, it was easy for landlines to become overwhelmed and all I got were busy signals. If I hadn’t gotten through the first time, it would have been a little more nerve wracking. I ended up calling my older brother who was also in college. We had no information but just talked about whatever we thought we knew.

I have mixed feelings about the information age we live in right now but, for events like last night, I suspect it is a big improvement over where we were. The ability to get into contact with friends and family and know right away is much better than where we used to be. And, being online and getting real time information also helps because you have a much better idea of what areas were hit and what area were safe. Still, I imagine there were lots of people who wanted to hear a voice just to confirm.

You know, I thought I was just going to do a random write up of little things but then I ended up going in a whole different direction. Seems like I should just leave it here.