We may need to do some readjusting

I, for one, am going to readjust what I'd planned to wear the next few days.

At times like these, it's important to consider footwear. 

Let's imagine a blustery day in late April. The tornado sirens sound. You and 30-50 others are in a lecture hall at That School Up North. You must quickly and calmly gather your belongings and move to the first floor of the building. You do not want to be slip sliding down those marble steps in cutesy shiny soled sandals. 

I was really hoping to wear that new little yellow dress today. Ain't gonna happen. 

I don't like to talk about it

too much, but our Country Mouse Borrow is sort of Big. There's a lot of space to patrol. As I was patrolling, I ran into Miss M. and it was the funniest thing.

Does it surprise you that we both had flashlights in our hip pockets?

There it goes out again.

And again.

Rocky is all over it. We need to be on alert tonight. 

Flashlight By My Side

Here's Table One. See this post to understand seating arrangement designations.

⊢
Harper Lee
Jack Kerouac
⊣
⊤
George Carlin
Henry David Thoreau
Robert Johnson
Patrick Stewart
Quinton Terantino
Benjamin Franklin
Richard Feinman
Jesse James (bandit; A. Leland)
Lauren Becall (age 19)
Samuel Colt
John Ford
⊥
⊣
Robert E. Lee
Martin Luther King, Jr.
⊢
⊥
T. Jefferson
C.S. Lewis
Ayn Rand
Teddy Roosevelt
Neal Stephenson (Sci-fi/Spec-fi author; Kat)
John von Neumann
Lewis Carroll
Christopher Wallas
Julia Child
Gordon Ramsey
Mark Twain
⊤

Taking a break from all things wallpaper

to check the status of the TORNADO room. Yippee.

A SIGNIFICANT SEVERE WEATHER OUTBREAK IS EXPECTED TO DEVELOP TONIGHT
INTO EARLY WEDNESDAY AND BRING DAMAGING WINDS TO THE REGION ALONG
WITH SOME TORNADOES. DUE TO A RARE COMBINATION OF INTENSE WIND SHEAR
AND INSTABILITY FOR THIS TIME OF YEAR...SOME HIGHER END SEVERE
WEATHER WILL BE POSSIBLE INCLUDING WIDESPREAD DAMAGING WINDS WITH
GUSTS UP TO 80 MPH AND A STRONG TORNADO. THIS ACTIVITY IS EXPECTED
BETWEEN 9 PM AND 3 AM FOR LOCATIONS WEST OF INTERSTATE 55 AND BETWEEN
2 AND 7 AM FOR LOCATIONS GENERALLY EAST OF INTERSTATE 55.

Hum. I'd rather be sound asleep BETWEEN 2 AND 7 AM.

Stupid SIGNIFICANT WEATHER OUTBREAK.

Let's take a drive

down the Natchez Trace Parkway between Tupelo and Mathiston. We'll see some lovely countryside and some of the damage done to it by tornadoes in April, 2011.

A few tings before we get going...

1) No commercial vehicles allowed. But recreational vehicles are okay.

2) Speed limit 50mph. But 60mph is okay.

3) Guns are okay.

As of February 22, 2010, a new federal law allows people who can legally possess firearms under applicable federal, state, and local laws, to legally possess firearms in this park.

In Mississippi, your truck is your castle so you can carry your gun in your truck even if you don't have a concealed carry permit.

4) Mind the bicyclists (although we saw none today).

5) I took 71 photos and whittled them down to 23. To give a sense of distance, each photo's caption gives the time. For uploading purposes, I resized them.

Here we go! 1:28:36

Because you can never have too many copies of the Declaration of Independence,

I bought two more yesterday.

$4.63 to the children; $0.32 to the state

I love The Palmer House Thrift Store where every penny I spend except those that go to the Sovereign State of Mississippi goes to The Palmer Home for Children in Columbus, Mississippi. I buy a lot of books there.

Palmer Home for Children is today an independent institution governed by an unpaid, volunteer Board of Directors. But we are proud of our Presbyterian heritage and maintain close ties with Presbyterian and other churches as well as interested friends concerned about family breakup and the plight of fatherless children.

[Incidentally, according to Off the Beaten Path Mississippi,  Mississippians give more per capital to charity than citizens of any other state. I tried to verify this independently but was not able to do so. It does make sense, though, given Mississippians' acquaintance with tornadoes and hurricanes, and our tendency to go to church. As my father would often say, "There but for the Grace of God go I."

Oh look. It's raining.]

The Palmer Thrift Store was having a 1/2 price sale on books! And yes, that is Ronald Regan who once said,

... On my way to the hall, a fellow recognized me and asked what I was doing in Las Vegas.... I told him what I was here for, and he said, "What are a bunch of farmers doing in Las Vegas?" I couldn't resist. I said, "Buster, they are in a business that makes a Las Vegas crap table look like a guaranteed annual income!" --Remarks to state officers of the Future Farmers of America, July 29, 1987

From The Quotable Ronald Regan compiled and edited by Peter Hannaford, copyright 1998 published by Regnery Publishing, Inc. It's for Mr. Big Food's bookshelf.

Lydia Pickham is Her Name (1949) is not a work of fiction! 

Looks like we're in for nasty weather.

15 seconds

This popped up to the west and tracked north east, so we didn't catch any of it, but I bet they did a few miles up the road!

As I was on my way to Starkvegas this afternoon, I passed a lot of County and Emergency Management vehicles out and about-- I'm guessing their drivers were on their way to the Courthouse, where I'd seen County and Emergency trucks.

Stay tuned! 

UPDATE: Now it's our turn.

I did not mess with the colors. It really looked like this.

 Plus some hail.

Water, walkie-talkies, etc.

The tornado room is provisioned.

The walkie-talkies are set to weather radio, but because redundancy is a good thing, there's also a battery operated radio. I've changed out the phone cords so the land-line phone now reaches the tornado room, a.k.a., the laundry room.

All of the prep work means we will not have a tornado here. That's the way it works.

It's Springtime! UPDATED

LOCALLY HEAVY RAIN AND THUNDERSTORMS ARE EXPECTED ACROSS AREAS ALONG AND NORTHWEST OF THE NATCHEZ TRACE CORRIDOR THROUGH MIDDAY AS A FAST-MOVING LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM AFFECTS THE ARKLAMISS. TOTAL RAINFALL AMOUNTS SHOULD RANGE FROM 1 TO 3 INCHES WILL LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS POSSIBLE. THESE HIGH RAINFALL TOTALS IN A SHORT AMOUNT OF TIME SHOULD LEAD TO PONDING OF WATER ISSUES IN LOW LYING AREAS AND ALSO SOME RISK OF FLASH FLOODING. A FLASH FLOOD WATCH IS IN EFFECT THROUGH NOON.

IN ADDITION...  SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS WILL HAVE THE  POTENTIAL TO PRODUCE DAMAGING WIND GUSTS TO 60 MPH...HAIL UP TO AN INCH IN DIAMETER...AND TORNADOES ARE NOT OUT OF THE QUESTION.

Crazy. We do need the rain, though. 

UPDATE

1:10pm CST and it's still raining