Rapture Crapture

Wasn't there something about the end of the world this last weekend? What with the goody-two-shoes being grabbed by an invisible hand and being taken to heaven or something? (It kind of reminded me of the episode of "Six Feet Under" where the woman is driving along and the truck full of inflatable x-rated blow-up dolls loses it's cargo and she gets into an accident watching all the bodies "ascend" into heaven, mistaking it for the rapture. Anyone? Anyone?)

Well it didn't happen, whatever it was. I was kind of hoping for a zombie apocolypse (*). At least that was something I was prepared for.

Pictured: Far too many sharp objects for a person to have laying around and not be used for beheading zombies, or dicing produce. Please note, I was all set to have a party. You know. Bring your own shotgun, canned goods, bottled water, etc. Hole up in the basement. Take out a zombie one at a time as they come down the stairs and enjoy a cheese flight. That sort of thing.

Instead of the rapture, we received a mini-smoting that took the form of a tornado that remarkably didn't come ripping up through the Southern and Western parts of the metro and decided to just touch down whereever it darn-well pleased: Meaning the Northside.

Of COURSE I only found this out as I was leaving the matinee and I received a few frantic voice messages from my mom and later when listening to NPR on my way home and hearing the damage reports. (And yes, once again I found myself in a show during storm season completely oblivious to the weather outside. It was different from the old summers 7-8 years ago where CRPC was pretty much right next to a storm siren so if it went off, we'd stop, then re-state our line and keep going. Now I'm in a black box and we managed to barrel through a 68 minute matinee with a group of sassy seniors and didn't hear boo. And to think we were worried about the musical in the theater next to us being distracting.)

Anyway, I got home for a quick damage assessment and then started to check Facebook for the remainder of the afternoon and evening to see what was the status of my friends who live in North Mipples... only now realizing (due to Facebook) that I have quite a few more buddies on the North side than I thought. Further still, being grateful that other people in the world were throwing their good will and concern into cyber-space, and more over that everyone who responded (and their pets) are all okay. Joplin, MO got f#cked yesterday by their tornadoes, and as always it could have been a lot worse.

Speaking of- I don't have any pics to show you since I didn't have even a knocked over herb pot to show for it. (Really? I think I've experienced at least 8-9 tornado-y severe weather systems in the last 6 years that I've been in my house and nary a ONE decides to knock that decrepit pine tree over onto my s#itty garage? Right. Right. Gratitude, Michael. Please.) Poor FeeJ, however, took some pretty impressive damage to her home and needed some emergency chainsaw action for her tree. This, of course, made me realize that the closest chainsaw I have is in my mom's garage where she currently isn't using it and if it was in MY possession I could have totally been a hero yesterday and lent my services.

Come to think of it...a chainsaw would have tooootally been useful for the zombie apocolypse, doi. Two birds with one stone and all that.


*Zombies have been on my list of unnatural fears since I was 7-8 years old and the concept of death was very scary to me. That and the "Thriller" video running ad nauseum on MTV made me fret every time we drove past a cemetary. I fully expected to see the dead burst forth from the earth and start break-dancing or showing jazz hands.