Retro Flashback: Thanksgiving 2008

I once said that I was working on getting up some videos of the Economic Stimulus Package Thanksgiving Road Trip Spectacular. Well, truth is, I forgot about it for quite a while until Brenda asked me why they haven't been put up yet. I was planning on putting together all the videos into one like I did with my Texas Road Trip, but it appears that this is not going to happen since I haven't done it yet. So, I've decided on giving you the highlights in chronological order, as uploaded to Blogger. This took forever, the autosave kept failing, and my 'connection to blogger' kept getting 'lost'. So, you better like it for all the frustration it caused. No wonder I hadn't done this before now...

The first thing I learned was that all you have to do is point a camera at Brenda and she will perform like a monkey without any prompting. Here we are stopped at a gas station to fill up and have dinner. It is very cold. Very. Very very. And as you will see, we're not wearing coats because we are geniuses.

I just got back in the car after running Remy around outside so that she would do her thing, which is why I am breathing so heavily, and why I am so cold and glad to be in the car.

We spent the night at a La Quinta in Indianapolis and got on the road again after a few hours of sleep. Brenda drove from Indianapolis until right before the Pennsylvania boarder, where I took over. Right after that happened, there was a wreck on I-70 and we got stuck in traffic... forever. Here I am, thrilled about the situation. As soon as we made it to the next exit, like an hour later, I took it and trusted Garmin to find our way back to civilization. I believe that we detoured through Washington, PA, home of Washington and Jefferson College, which I think we may have drove by. There were very dark and twisty roads. I do not recommend going to this town when it's this icy out.

After the detour, the driver's side windshield washer fluid sprayer froze up and stopped working. Why is it that you can always see better out of the passenger side of the windshield than the driver's side? After a few terrifying minutes of driving while unable to see because there was salt all over my window, I finally found a place to pull over and try to remedy the problem. You'll see here that I do not manage to get the driver's windshield washer fluid sprayer to work, but it started to dry up outside and the window wasn't nearly as bad after that. Although, for a while I did think that I may have to time travel back to high school and spray a Windex bottle out of my window like I used to in the Mustang. (I had one on hand, just in case.) Days later it finally warmed up and I haven't had this problem since.

Also, we've reached Pennsylvania, home of Tasteykakes.

The reason for this trip was ultimately to go to the Madonna concert in Atlantic City. I drove to Atlantic City and saw her limousine on the way there. Here is the video proof.

I like musicals and when the drive was getting long, we usually opted to put something in that we could all sing along to. Wicked was one of my favorites, and a fun song to sing was What is This Feeling? Funny thing, I accidentally replaced Galinda's name with Belinda's name once and thereafter, anytime that song came on, it was about Belinda. This camera angle is from the dash just so you could enjoy the dash dirt and dash dog hair and the Garmin being all awesomely in the way.

I had a really hard time switching my camera between video and pictures. A really hard time. In fact, I have several videos just like this one (or shorter). But you're only getting to see this one. I can hear your "thank yous" already.

It was always fun to piss off Garmin or sit idly by as he went completely insane. This joy may only be appreciated by those in the car with him for four days... recalculating!

Brenda apparently loves Diet Coke. I don't even know why she was doing this. There was no reason. This is Brenda. If you have ever wondered exactly what her personality is, or what she is thinking, or how she behaves... This is the epitome of Brenda. Now you understand why we are such good friends.

This is also very Brenda-esque. Do not judge her. Spice up your life.

I was pretty excited about the time changes. Phones are super smart. Do not judge me.

I talked repeatedly about doing a Chinese Fire Drill (I know, but there is no politically correct term for this, and if the Chinese are going to get mad at me, they already did for my Summer Olympics blogs) the entire time we were on the trip. So, when we were nearly home, we decided that we better do it or be forever regretful. I thought it best to have the jumpy video of me running around the car instead of a stationary camera on the interior. Just so you know, the reason I am screaming as soon as I get out of the car and the reason I cannot stop laughing is because when I got out, I jumped in a giant puddle that made water cover my entire shoe. And it was very cold.

Surprise, it snowed again... and though I didn't have problems with my windshield washer fluid sprayer this time, my driver's side windshield wiper just about fell off my car. Man, those things are awfully tricky to get back on. Okay, they're impossible. The only reason I have a windshield wiper on my car is because Brenda played the hero.

So, those were the main highlights of the trip. I hope you can see why I agreed to drive instead of fly for this. It was really a pretty fun vacation all around. I thank my traveling companions for so much fun.


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Nature's Light Show

One thing that still amazes me since moving to Missouri is all the thunderstorms. We had a quick downpour last Friday night and after it stopped raining, there was constant lightning. It was pretty amazing. Here's what it looked like - there's no video editing to speed up these lightning "strikes" which are cloud to cloud, but the sound has been taken out, just because it was idle chatter between me and one of my friends.

That's just so cool. You never saw anything quite like that growing up on the East Coast. I really do love the weather here, even when there's threat of tornadoes. It's just so interesting and different every time. I'm so happy I moved here.


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Can't Blow Me Down

We had some pretty severe weather last night. I heard my first tornado sirens since moving here, so that was pretty exciting. Remy and I even did our duty and went duly into the basement. (Upon relating this story to a coworker, I was told, "You're not a true Midwesterner. You're supposed to go outside and look around, then discuss with your neighbors if you really think you need to take cover or not.")

The evening storms took over my prime time television, and on any other night I wouldn't have cared, but they cut into 30 Rock and I was forced to watch it online today instead of my actual TV. How rude.

The worst of the storm didn't hit until 2am. I know because it woke me up. I swear that I could see green lightning through my bedroom curtains. The amount of lightning, the super hard winds, and the constant thunder grumble scared me enough to turn on the television to see if I was about to die. And if I needed to put on shoes. I have the best priorities.

Turns out, at 2:06am, it seems a tornado went through the northern part of Kansas City, and quite possibly Gladstone as well. Here are maps showing my relation (A) to the destruction (B) I heard about this morning:

12 miles from me (Kansas City North)

Here's what it looked like:

3.6 miles from me (Gladstone)


Here's What it looked like:

Last night the television told me that it was severe hurricane force winds, possibly exceeding 80mph, but they didn't detect any rotation. The sirens I had heard earlier were not going off. So I went back to bed and didn't put my shoes on. I figured that meant I was safe, my sleepy head assuming if there was no tornado all would be fine. Obviously I learned nothing from Hugo, Andrew, Katrina and Rita. But... this wasn't a hurricane! It was just a bad thunderstorm with a bunch of wind. And with that thought in my mind, I safely and soundly slept until my alarm went off this morning.

(Apparently the sirens were never set off in Gladstone, either. They were given no reason to. But they woke up to a lot more problems than me. Destroyed homes, downed power lines, fallen trees.)

We lost power (if you're wondering why I'm speaking in the plural, I included Remy) overnight. I heard it go off and come back a couple times before I fell asleep thinking that it was a good thing I switched over to using my cell phone as my alarm clock a couple years ago.

This morning I had a meeting at an undisclosed location prior to work, so I went there first thing. When I arrived at work at 10:30, trace and DNA were having a big combined section meeting because they had nothing better to do - the power was out in our building. So, right after I got there, they sent everyone home.

Unfortunately, I had a luncheon to attend today, so I still had to "work". Which wasn't really work at all because I got to listen to some speakers and eat free food, but the point of the matter is that everyone else got to be at home sitting on their asses while I did not. I did get to go home at 2pm though, so I guess I can't really complain too much.

I watched a couple video news reports from the Kansas City Star on this and saw Chief Corwin in one of them, but they aren't very nice about giving away embed codes and I didn't feel like working hard enough to link it here... But I will link you to a printed story, because I'm super nice like that. And reading is good for you.

Anyway, point of the story - I'm alive, Remy's alive, Remy seemed less worried by the weather than I did, and the house is still in one piece. We were not sucked off the Earth by living in the Midwest, and yes, I still think it's a lovely place.


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