My New Home

Hi folks. Yeah, I know it's been a while, and I can't even really promise that this update is the return of the mighty "stranger in a strange land" blog. However, given that this blog is supposed to be about the differences between my former home in Southern California, and my new home in Tennessee, it seems fitting that I make this entry about one of the biggest differences between the two states: Tornados vs. Earthquakes.

Let me begin with a story and a few pictures from the day before yesterday. Actually, from the day before that, all the newscasts were speaking of the severe "supercell" storms headed towards middle Tennessee, with possible tornadic activity. That's one major difference between the two natural disasters: There is still no warning for earthquakes. 

That day, around noon, I headed down Interstate 65 to the Longhollow exit - the route I normally take to work every day. I stopped at Arby's to grab some grub for the family, then headed home. It was slightly windy, and there were clouds to the west, but no rain yet. I got home, and after we ate, we started watching weather reports about the storms approaching. We were under a tornado warning, which means that this particular storm had a history of producing tornados. Indeed, we were watching the reports about some of the damage done in counties to the west of us. They spoke of golfball-sized hail, and severe wind damage, and tornados. We piled our blankets, weather radio, battery powered lamp, into the most interior bathroom of the house, where there are no exterior walls. This was our 'place of safety'. Watching the news later, I realized what a joke that concept was.

When the storm approached a few minutes later, the wind did not seem that fearsome, but the hail did. Certainly larger than any I had ever seen in California. Not quite golfball-sized - perhaps about the size of a  large grape. Naturally, being Greg, I videotaped the hail, as well as some of the news reports and EAS warnings about our county on TV. Wanda, who had been planning on leaving early in order to get to work on time, called her boss to say that she would be late, because she didn't want to leave until the storm had passed.

Listening to the hail, which was big, but kinda sparse, and noticing very little wind, I was not really that frightened. Then Jamie said she thought the sky looked 'green'. Wanda looked, agreed, and suddenly we were all running for the bathroom. I did not notice the sky being green, and did not really believe in the significance of it anyway, which I had been told of before. Those who know me are aware that I am the ultimate skeptic! But they were the tornado experts (Jamie has actually studied tornados all of her life), and I did as they told me. While hidden away in the bathroom, we joked to lighten the intensity of the moment, as we listened to the hail above us, pounding harder now and sounding like it was going to break through the roof. The power flickered off and back on a few times.

It's the not knowing that makes things hard to deal with, so at the first lightening of the hailstorm, we ventured out to the hall, and to the windows, and to the door. When it seemed safe, we turned the tv back on, and learned that a tornado had hit Sumner county - hey that's us! It hit in Goodlettsville - hey, that's us! As time went on, we learned more. It hit on 31W, where I take the backroads to work when the interstate is backed up. Here's what it did there:

That used to be an antique shop, behind what used to be a tree. The tornado did some more damage to some businesses along 31W and Longhollow Pike, skipped across Interstate 65 at Longhollow (where I had been just a little while earlier!), taking a few cars with it, and then did this:

This is what's left of the Metro Baptist Church. There were 35 pre-schoolers in the back part of the building, but no one was hurt there, thank God. The tornado then continued up Longhollow Pike, damaging several other businesses, before heading to Gallatin, where it did the most fearsome destruction, including killing 9 people, and destroying 167 homes. If your heart can take it (mine broke as I watched it), you can CLICK THIS LINK, and go to where it says "Sumner County - Unedited Damage Video" to see the path of devastation.

Somehow, Wanda still thought it was okay to go to work, despite all of us urging her not to. I walked her to the van, as I always do, and watched her drive away. A minute or two later, she called me, saying that as she approached the interstate, she saw a bunch of people huddled under the overpass. I told her she needed to come home. She then reported that it was hailing again. She was only about a quarter mile away, and there was nothing but a light rain where I was standing at the front door. She began to panic - something she never, ever does, and I told her she needed to come home NOW. She turned around, saying the sky didn't look right off to the west. I talked to her as she headed home, only to hear her cries of fear as the hail intensified it's onslaught on the van. I tried to calm her - I still did not see any hail - as I yelled at her mother and Jamie to get back into the bathroom. The hail approached me then, larger than before - perhaps the size of a walnut - and with greater intensity. Wanda was still very frightened, thinking the hail was going to break through her windshield (it did put dents in all of our cars!), and after what seemed like eternity, I finally saw her coming back down the road, with another car close on her heels. Knowing how desperate she was to get back into the house, I warned her to be careful of the car behind her, and not take the turn too fast. I tried to find something to cover her head from the hail, but couldn't, so I just ran out to get her, and we piled back into the bathroom with the others.

There had been no second tornado in our area, just the severe hailstorm. In all that day, there were 19 tornados spotted in middle Tennessee, three of them hitting the ground. 12 people were killed and 700 homes destroyed or damaged. Like earthquake coverage back in SoCal, I had seen tornado damage on TV before, but to see it so close to home, and to actually see some of it in real life, basically right along the route I take to work every day, I made a decision: I do not like tornados. Watching the aerial footage of Gallatin, where entire homes were reduced to a pile of matchsticks, or where some homes had not an ounce of wood left at all, just a barren concrete foundation, the rest of the home taken away with the passing winds, I realized that there is no 'place of safety'.

In the other times a potential tornado had come by (this was the fifth or sixth since I've been visiting or living in Tennessee), and the power went out, and everyone sat in the hall, crying or joking to deal with the stress, I was never really afraid. This time, I was not really afraid, until Wanda began to panic. Next time, I'll know better. Next time, as I sit on the floor of the bathroom, listening to the hail and the storm and the weather radio, I will be wishing I was back in California, sitting on the floor, leaning against my bedroom's doorframe, as a nice, gentle 7.1 earthquake rolls beneath me...

Well, I know it's been quite a while since I posted anything. That's because I'm a lazy bum. Haha. No, really, I kinda go through phases where there's too much to say, and then other times there's nothing to say, or what I want to say is oo much to put out here (I find other places to write that stuff) so in the end I write nothing. Kinda like what I've written here so far. LOL. But, just to update y'all...

I have been moved to LP (that's loss prevention for my non-Best Buy friends!) at my store. I was pissed when it happened, because... well, at the very least, it would've been nice if they mentioned it to me beforehand, and even afterwards it would have been nice if someone had taken me aside and explained why they decided to do it. I still don't know if it's because they thought I sucked at SWAT, or they just thought I'd be good at LP. Or even if it's simply that they knew they could trust me up there. Besides all that, I have always avoided working LP because in my occasional stints up there, I have learned that the time can pass incredibly slowly, and I've always been one who likes to keep busy. Plus, I was worried that with my perpetual stomach problems, being trapped at the LP desk all day didn't seem like a good idea. And, I guess to a degree, even flashbacks of my agoraphobia and panic attacks came to mind, since once again, I'd be trapped in one place. Yeah, I know I've been 'cured' of agoraphobia for 6 or 7 years, but such is the impact of it on my life that it still can linger in my mind on occasions such as this.

Anyway, my point here is that a funny thing happened on the way to the forum: It turns out I actually like working LP. I like the ability to give a friendly greeting, and being able to assist customers. I like learning to be more sociable (always an issue for me), and I like trying to keep an eye on suspicious people.

With the suddenness of this change, I don't know what the future holds in store for me, but for now I'm okay with LP. Ha! Now that I've said that, they'll prolly move me somewhere else next week!

Thanks to those of you who took the time for prayers or a kind word. Karina is doing much better, and is almost healed already. Last night, she and I went to see the two other girls who were in the accident (and one of the girls' boyfriend, who had been in the accident but wasn't hurt). The girls are home now, but they will be in back braces for 3 months. Krystalyn isn't allowed to sit up or move at all without her brace on, but at least she isn't paralyzed. They had to insert a steel rod to replace the vertebrae that shattered in the accident. She showed us her stitches - it wasn't pretty. They all seemed in pretty good spirits, considering all they'd been through. They talked and commiserated, and sadly it made Karina remember the accident, which she had only bits and pieces of till now. Now she says she can't get it out of her head. She had gotten out of the car to check on Krystalyn, who was screaming, and then she just kinda collapsed. She remembers her dad coming up to her and asking, "Karina, what happened?" He looks at his daughter, who has collapsed on the ground and is laying flat on her back, and whose face is covered in blood, and he asks what happened. Not, "Oh my god, honey, are you okay?" He doesn't hold her or comfort her, he just stands there and repeats, "What happened?" They all think he was just worried about the legal ramifications. Grrr...

Okay, nevermind, I'm getting all riled up again. All of them - Karina included - say they hope he goes to jail for this. I think that would be best.

Moving on... During my absence here, I have applied for and been turned down for a promotion. Such is life, I guess.

It's been a long, stressful 24 hours. My beautiful neice Karina, who I love as if she were my own, and whom some of you might recognize as a frequent model on my photo blog, was in a bad car wreck last night. The slimy piece of crap who calls himself her father, decided to accelerate into a bumb in the road, in an effort to jump a cross street. This with 5 people in the car, none of them wearing seatbelts. When they landed, he lost control of the car, skidded a half block in the road, across someone's yard, through a mailbox, a concrete front porch, and into a house. Karina's face went through the windshield, and she was the lucky one. The two girls in the back seat, 12 year old and 18 year old sisters, both broke their backs. The 12 year old broke hers in 3 places, and the other shattered one of her vertabrae. She's been in surgery all day, trying to remove the bone fragments, in the hopes no damage will be done to her spinal cord. Karina broke her nose, and had her right eye swollen shut, but thankfully there was no bone damage to her face. She also had a concussion, and will be wearing a neck brace for two weeks. There was concern that her left leg was broken, where it hit the gear shift, but it is only badly bruised. She's in a lot of pain, but it looks like she will heal in time. Sadly, her father lived through the wreck. I know that sounds harsh, but if you knew the pain this alleged man has put her through in her life, you would agree - even if she doesn't. On our trip to the hospital last night, the terror of the unknown in my mind, my head shook with the rage of murderous intent towards this man. Those I spoke to agreed, and a 'get in line' mentality was forged. But I know full well that nothing will come of it. The son of a bitch is a con artist, forever using, abusing and hurting, only to come back with an "I'm sorry, I've changed, it'll never happen again" and those who rage against him suddenly lack the wherewithal to stand against him. What about now? "This time is different," they say, "He's never done this before, he's never endangered her life before..." What the fuck? Is it not an endangerment to take a child to live in a drug den? When not only the father's associates, but the father himself, is arrested time and again for drug use, and drug dealing - while she is with him, is that not endangerment? When he gets out of prison, and goes to see her, and laughs and tells her what a fun place the jail is, what interesting characters there are there, does that not send her on the wrong path? I'm not even going to go into the allegations of pimping, or his minor teenage 'girlfriends'.

Two days before the accident, when he was supposed to pick her up, and she waited on the front porch in the cold, only to never hear from him, crying herself to sleep, there were only two excuses he could have given that she would accept; he was either dead, or in jail. So he calls the next day, spinning a glorious tale of being pulled over and carted off to jail for one night because he had missed a court date, and she believed, because it was easier for her to believe. It hurt less to think her poor father had been carted away than to face the likelihood that he was too fucked up on crack to keep a promise to his daughter. I said at the time (not to Karina, of course) that she would have been better off if he had been dead. I didn't want to mean it, but it is true. He is a waste of a human being, who can only hurt and use and abuse others, to his own satisfaction. I only pray that his reckless endangerment, his lack of auto insurance, something, anything about this accident will be enough to put the sack of shit into prison long enough for her to grow up and away from him. And if he dies in prison, I will only be sad that I didn't get to watch it.

I'm still alive, and I apologize for my extreme lack-of-being-hereness. Since I seem to lack any original inspiration, I've decided to raid the archives. Here is a poem I wrote nearly 2 years ago, when I first started my other blog. Enjoy!

I sit here with my dunce cap on

Without a thought to thunk

I try to spin a fancy yarn

But wind up smelling like a skunk

Whatever shall I prose about

To entertain y’all

Perhaps I’ll mark that feeble time

I tried to knit a shawl

Or I could write an ode to food

And please my hungry belly

If only I could find a rhyme

For peanut butter and jelly

I’ve written putrid poems before

As some who know me know

But I’ve ne’er writ one quite this bad

Nor whose rhyme scheme was this po’

Inspiration comes at last

As Kev’s  followers can see

I’ll write a poem of nonsense

That you might find sil-ly.

The End

P.S. You're welcome.

Okay, so I was at the end of this work of utter brilliance. A blog entry so stunningly moving and completely heartfelt that tears would flow like a river down the face of all who read it. So ironically humorous and laughably hysterical that tears would flow like a river down the face of all... well, yeah. Whatever. Anyway, it was good. But do you see that post here? No, you don't. You see this post here instead. And why is that, you ask? Because, say it with me, Blogdrive is Satan! I didn't even get a chance to save my post to the clipboard (a practice I learned long ago, when I first began to suspect that Blogdrive might be a lesser demon at least), because this time, the whole damn computer just froze up, which has never, ever happened to this computer before. So, how do I know this was Blogdrive's fault? Are you paying attention?! It's because Blogdrive is Satan! Sheesh. In fact, I'm fairly certain that Blogdrive is responsible for more than just crashed computers. That plane that went down in Mexico in '78? Blogdrive. The Brinks Job, back in the 60's? Blogdrive. Who do you think financed the SLA? And tell me this, have you ever seen Blogdrive and Ted Bundy in the same room together? Coincidence? I don't think so! So, in summation, Blogdrive is Satan. Plus, I think I chipped a nail while I was typing this.

I give you more Sonny...

I call this one "Chillin'. Drinkin' a Bud."

In other news... I don't really have any. Saturday is my supervisor's last day, and I'm finally beginning to realize how much it's going to suck to lose him. Not only do I get along with him better than any previous bosses, but on a more basic level, he and I actually talk. We have a lot in common, if not in life experience, at least in thought processes. So, yeah, I'm gonna miss him. Sadly, the people in my new store are dropping like flies - mostly by thier own choice, but it still sucks since I just started getting to know these people. Ah well... I guess I can just look forward to meeting more new people... who will then wander off. *Sigh*

Sneaking up on his innocent victim...

the tiger bravely prepares to attack...

rising up on his hind legs, ready to go for the kill...

Doh! That wasn't in the plan!

Ruh-roh: Now Pookie is pissed!

Pookie pretty much beats the crap out of him everyday, but he seems to love it. Anyway, in other news, I didn't get the supervisor position. I had a nice 'interview' with my manager, and I think I impressed him with my knowledge and ideas, but he (and the GM) had already decided to go with some guy from out of state. Hey, I can't complain too much - I came from out of state when they didn't have a position for me, and they made room. In some good news, it turns out I am quite enjoying my SWAT duties, and I plan to make an impact there. I do think I have a good shot at supervisor next time it opens up around here. It is time to make my mark...