I Almost Died Before Ever Seeing Hawaii

Last night some severe thunderstorms went through the area. It had been raining all day, off and on, and it's not unusual to have thunderstorms here in Kansas City. We weren't in a tornado warning, and I hadn't watched the news or really heard anything about the weather all day. So, when I left Beth's house to go home, I wasn't expecting to come face to face with death by tornado.

When I walked out of the Anderson's, it was only slightly drizzling. Carolyn, Dany and I walked to our cars. We didn't jog. We got a little wet. I had my windshield wipers on the lowest setting as we drove away. Like I said, it had been kinda raining off and on all day. No biggie.

As we drove, the rain got heavier. Once we got to I-35 south, it had gotten worse. There was some water on the road and it eventually got to the point that I pulled over to wait out the storm because I couldn't see well enough, even with my windshield wipers on as fast as they would go. Then it started to slow and I felt comfortable driving again.

I pulled back into the road and drove a bit further, where traffic stopped. Initially, since no one was moving, I thought maybe there had been an accident ahead, in the midst of the stormy weather. But, it was just because of the weather. A few moments later, all hell broke loose.

Hail started to come down, faster than I'd ever seen. Tons and tons of hail, ranging in size from dimes to quarters. It started accumulating on the ground like snow. In inches. Probably right around four inches. Of hail. In a few minutes.

The rain and hail were coming down hard, I could hear it hitting my car and windshield, sad that I didn't make it the mile home to the garage. I apologized to my car for not leaving sooner. We had almost made it!

Then the wind picked up, blowing in all directions. Strong wind. Except the only gauge I had for measuring how strong the wind was, was my car shaking as it blew. It was dark (11:45pm), so we couldn't see tree branches blowing, and the rain was coming down so hard we couldn't tell which direction it was coming from. The lightning that flashed was really bright but brief. The rain was hitting the car and washing over the windows so much, I couldn't even see rain drops blowing in one direction or another.

It was so loud that I turned up my radio to try to gauge it. Carolyn and I were screaming over the storm and could barely hear each other. The radio cranked to all but two bars on the volume gauge, and I could just hear it. I'd never be able to stand listening to the radio that loud.

It was then that I started to think that we might be in the middle of a tornado. I was hoping it was a small tornado and wasn't going to pick up my car. I pushed my foot harder on the brake (as if that would help anything) and realized that both of my legs were shaking. Next to me, Carolyn started reciting Hail Mary's and Our Father's. Even I started to think that might be a good idea.

I screamed to her that it had to be over soon. I said it three different times before it was actually over. I looked out of the driver's side window. The left lane of the road had turned into a raging river, and I stepped on my brake some more. Hail was rushing by on my left, accumulating on my right. The windshield wipers, still moving as fast as they could, were now brushing aside shredded leaf particles and small twigs along with rain and hail. Even with the wipers moving, the windshield looked like I was going through an automatic car wash. The wind changed directions.

Out the front window, I saw a green fireball in the sky. A few seconds later, to the left of it, there was a larger green firework looking thing. I screamed, "Holy Fuck!" and hardly heard it. By this time, my heart was beating a bit faster, adrenaline was pumping. The storm lasted a bit longer. It felt like a couple minutes, but I didn't keep track of the time. I'm sure it felt much longer than it actually was, so I wouldn't want to make an estimate.

But it finally died down to just a light drizzle. The car in front of me didn't move. Eventually, I passed it on the right shoulder, driving through the four inches of hail. And I went home. 200 yards south of us, there was no leaf debris in the road. Father south, it looked like nothing happened. Traffic was stacked up in the other direction and on all the exit ramps. We probably saw 6 cop cars or fire personnel in the mile it took us to get home.

Everything at home was fine. The dogs didn't even seem freaked out. But it took me and Carolyn and Dany a good hour to calm down. We looked for information about the storm and tornadoes, but didn't find anything. I was still convinced it was a tornado. And if it wasn't, I never, ever, ever wanted to be in one.

We all agreed it was the scariest thing we'd ever experienced. In the morning, the news said there was a "wet microburst" in the area we were in. Winds reached up to 80 mph and there was lots of rain and hail. Today, we drove around to look at the effects of the storm we narrowly survived. (Yes, this may be an exaggeration, but it certainly felt like we were near death at the time!)

This map shows you where we were parked on 35 last night - at the red X. The highlighted circle is what I approximate as the area of destruction (which is likely not super accurate, though we did drive around the area), and the little black house is approximately around about where I live-ish, kinda.



This is a Sonic where we though we could grab some breakfast. It wasn't open. This used to be their sign.

And this is their parking area.


And this is a big old pile of hail. The storm hit at 11:45pm or so and this picture was taken at 10:30am. It's September. The overnight temperature was in the low 70's. How much hail had to be here??

This is Stroud's. You may have seen it recently on Man vs. Food (look around the 6:15 mark). The sign, which should be on the left, is now down, on the right.

This is the spot on I-35 that we were stopped at last night. There are several broken trees right here.

A closer look at two of the down trees.

And just a little bit behind us, This sign blew over.

And this tree.

And this sign. Which was facing the opposite direction as the that first sign I showed you.

Even this afternoon, the roads were covered in these shredded leaf bits. Trees were just torn apart last night.

And this tree was blown over right behind a Corvette. They got pretty lucky.

About 4 panels of this fence were down.

And another one down, another one down, another one bites the dust.





And a tree on a house.


It was a scary night, and scary day, actually seeing the damage that this storm caused. Power was out for a few thousand in the area, and the traffic lights were all out as well. Everything was a flashing red light with a four way stop.

But, on the bright side, if there hadn't been a storm, I would have never been driving around, and if I had never been driving around, I would never have found this precious gem, right here in Kansas City.


There's always a silver lining.

The deposit is paid for the Hawaii trip. I'm going in February. Here's hoping I don't die before then!


End Blog.

Ghetto Christmas

This blog was supposed to have pictures of the house with its lights up and a picture of my fancy borrowed Christmas tree, except the batteries in my camera are dead and my computer won't read my camera's memory card. So, you'll have to settle for this picture taken with my cell phone. I know, lame.


Also lame is the string of lights making their way to the wall socket. Originally I had the tree in front of that wall socket, but I thought it would be cooler to put it in my window.

You can't see the string of lights going to the wall from the street. I'm only ghetto fabulous from the inside.

That last sentence is a total lie. When I put my lights up this year they were a little more droopy in spots than last. It looked nice, kinda this little swag thing going on. Well, I'll tell you why this is a bad idea.

It's windy in Kansas City. Therefore all of the lights across the front of my house are no longer in a cool swag pattern, they are inside my plastic gutters. This gives them a 'diffuse' look that will likely cause a 'char' look to my house once it's burned down.

I need to fix it, I know... but it's cold outside, and I'd like to figure out a way to do it without a ladder. Because the one I borrowed has already been returned. Besides, it's been below freezing for the last million eons here, so the heat from the lights it practically nonexistent and therefore utterly fireproof. Those seem like good excuses for the insurance agency to me.


End Blog.

Aw, Swell

I thought I'd share my left ankle bee sting with you because it's remarkably swollen for a silly little bug bite. The internets say that I'm okay as long as it stays localized, isn't over 3 inches, and doesn't last for more than a week. So, hopefully by Monday, it will no longer look like this:


Gross, huh? It's swollen enough that when I try to bend my ankle, it hurts a bit. And it's super itchy. I've been doing my best not to scratch and been doing a pretty good job of it because when I scratch it, it hurts... so that's a pretty good deterrent.

I'm gonna take another Benadryl and go to bed because it's just going to knock me out anyway. Joy. On the upside, maybe I'll finally sleep well. I just killed a really loud cricket who has been making it hard to get to sleep, and Remy's hopefully not going to wake me up at 3am again.

Here's to recovery!


End Blog.

Escape from Certain Death

It was really nice out yesterday when I got home from work. Kinda cool, but not cold, and sunny. I thought that it was prefect weather to cut my lawn and hoped that it might be the last time this season. The grass was kinda high and ugly and had gone to seed, and as I was mowing, like 5 other people in the neighborhood had the same idea.

I finished the front yard and was hoping that I had enough gas to finish the back, but only a few passes into the backyard and the mower died. So, I went to the gas station and got some more, came back, and continued mowing.

When I had about 1/3 of the back yard yet to finish, I was trying to get this really big weed along the fence out of the ground, and I felt this sharp pain on my right hip. I thought maybe something small shot out of the mower and hit me, even though it would have been a ridiculous angle to do so. Then I felt another sharp pain on my left ankle. My next thought was that there was some sort of thorn or something that I had picked up while trying to tame the jungle along my side fence. I looked at my ankle and didn't see anything hostile.

My hip was still hurting though, so I looked at it again and rubbed it. As I did, I saw a yellowjacket, pulled my hand back, and let's not sugar coat it... I panicked. I know that yellowjackets are evil, so I was scared. The devil's minion was out to get me. I know this because yellowjackets 1) are evil, 2) can sting more than once, 3) release pheromones calling their buddies to attack you as well, and 4) I wasn't sure if I was allergic to them or not. I've only been stung one other time by a giant wasp in high school, and I know that sometimes you don't develop allergies until after you've been stung.

This picture is so creepy!

So, I felt that panicking was an appropriate reaction. All of those things ran through my mind in a split second and I knew I had to get out of there or face the wrath of 9 million other angry yellowjackets.

So, because I'm smart, I had left the back door locked, and therefore had to sprint all the way around my house to the front door. I was flailing my arms and hoping that the yellowjacket I saw was not tangled up in the shirt I was wearing, and 9 million other yellowjackets were not following me. (I've seen My Girl, I know how this could end.) I got inside and headed to the bathroom to assess the damage. I'd been stung through my clothing.

I looked at my hip and ankle and saw them starting to swell around the sting sites. I was on my way to get some ice when I realized that I had spots on my inner thighs that were also very painful. Was I stung more than twice outside? Did I just get stung again?

You thought I panicked before!

The first thought I had was, "There's a yellowjacket inside my shorts!" I immediately ripped them from my body, along with my underwear (because who the hell knows where the yellowjacket is!) and threw them across the floor. Remy was excited by my actions and I said to her, "I'm so scared of my pants!" It was kind of pathetic, but in retrospect funny, so I thought I would share.

I ran into my room and put new underwear on, because I didn't want to run around my house with bee stings AND no underwear. It's one or the other - not both. You just can't do both. Plus, if I was about to go to the hospital because of anaphylactic shock, at least they would be clean.

Then, avoiding my pants of death which likely contained a living yellowjacket, I got some ice and tended to the swelling. In all, I managed to get five - count them, FIVE - bee stings. Luckily about this time, Carolyn called me, and foregoing whatever it was that she wanted to talk about, I asked her to be the best person in the world and go buy and bring me Benadryl so that I wouldn't die. She kindly obliged. I suppose that's bad timing on her part, eh? "Oh, and, while you're out doing that, could you pick up a gallon of milk for me?" (I was planning on going out for one later, but I knew this had pretty much done me in for the night.)

She also bought me a box of cereal to go with my milk, which I didn't ask for. It was kind of her, except for the fact that she obviously just did it to MOCK me. The cereal she bought was Honey Nut Cheerios.


She bought me BEE cereal! I could have been dying while waiting on her Benadryl delivery!

She claims that it was unintentional, which is sad because it's probably the most hilarious thing anyone has ever done to me. So, I had cereal for dinner, which was nice because I didn't have to cook or worry about what to eat at all. And... really... hil-aaaa-rious!

Meanwhile, I'm still afraid of my pants of death and to finish mowing the last of my yard.

It didn't help that Belinda told me a story about her dogs being attacked by yellowjackets who had an underground nest in her old yard.

Even covering everything and then mowing isn't a good idea because it stung me through my clothes! Or, quite possibly was somehow inside them. I'm still not sure how it happened.

The Benadryl knocked me out though (I took only one) and I slept from 8:30pm to 7:00am. And even though it was ten and a half hours of sleep, it was drug induced and I didn't really feel that well rested this morning.

The added bonus is that the stings still hurt a wee bit and now have become super itchy.

Bee venom, I hate you... Yellowjackets, I hate you more. I always thought people that ran away from them were crazy, that if you didn't bother them, they wouldn't hurt you. I have a sneaking suspicion I'm going to turn into one of "those" people after this.

Five times!!


End Blog.