I was so looking forward to having this past weekend off since it was a long week at work, and when it finally got here, Hurricane Dennis came along and f**ked everything up(I'm trying to stop swearing. eventually, I hope to be completely curse-free)!
Friday at work was a little weird. When I got there everyone was making plans to leave town and putting plastic over the computers. So, not being one to fight a chance to go home early on a Friday, I joined suit and left for the day. When I got home, however, my wife had been watching the news and the weather channel all day and was getting worried. They were saying Dennis was up to a Category 4, and the projected path was "somewhere between Mobile and Apalachicola", which wasn't very comforting since Mobile is 3 hours west of here, and Apalachicola is 2 hours east.
At this same time, my dad, step-mother, and brother and sister were on vacation in Puerto Rico, so no one was at the house which is on the beach and less than a mile from the shore. I tried reaching my dad on the phone in San Juan but couldn't get through. I decided I to put his hurricane shutters on since he was out-of-town and couldn't do it. Man, was that a pain in the ass. It took about three hours to do the entire thing.
So, after going home and watching the news, I said to my wife that if we're leaving we need to do it now, and not later. She decided she wanted to leave, so we packed our bags for about three days travel, and left for her aunt's house in Memphis, Tennessee with my wife's mother and niece also along for the ride.
So, after about ten hours of listening to my mother-in-law tell my wife to watch the speed limit, and seeing a billboard for an erotic bar called Wesley's Boobie Trap, we arrived.
I spent most of the next day swimming in her aunt and uncle's pool. The weather was pleasant, and her Memphis relatives were a lot cooler than the immediate family. They were much more mellow and knew how to control the volume and tone of their voices (mother-in-law, this means you!).
I really liked meeting my wife's cousin Adam. He's a musician in his 30s and he's currently working with a producer on his new album with his band. We weren't really in Memphis long enough to get to see the sites, but Adam told us that the next time we were there he could get us in clubs and bars all over town for free since his band plays all over Memphis. I heard one of his CDs before I got to meet him. My wife said it was from his last band that wasn't together anymore, and that it wasn't very new anymore, but it sounded pretty good. It had kind of a Three Doors Down quality to it, but not as melodramatic, I thought.
Well, after being there about two days, we had to drive all the way back to Panama City. I drove most of the way, going about ten miles over the speed limit the whole way, but strangely I never heard a sound out of my mother-in-law. I listened to Huey Lewis, Bare Naked Ladies, Eddie Money, R.E.M., and my Christian Rock CDs more than twice each. I was also treated to another interesting sign. This one was outside of a church and it stated "give Satan an inch, and he'll be a ruler". Hmm, how true.... how true, ha ha.
When we got back to our home, we found not a damned thing blown over or destroyed! No roof damage, no FEMA lines, no power outages, nothing! I didn't want MY place to get devoured but I thought I was gonna see some kind of storm impact. Hurricane Ivan took the same course through here and did some real damage around here. We had several tornadoes in the street (one actually hit the news channel as they were reporting), and several people died. But this time, not a thing.
It could be worse, I could be looking at the sun through a damp hole in the roof right now, but fortunately, I'm not.
The weekend wasn't a total loss, I suppose, since I finally forced myself to sit down and finish reading Dan Brown's Angels & Demons. I wish I could recommend it to people, but I can't really go out on that limb. I'm not exactly sure why I had such a hard time finishing the book since I flew right through Da Vinci Code, but I think it was because the books are so similar at the outset, and it seems like you're reading the same book at first. The last 100 pages were great, but it's hard to give a thumbs up on that criteria since it's a 569 page book (hardback).
I've decided to make F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby my next read. I'm not sure why I chose that one but I have and I've already read the first chapter. I've been reading more books of the Bible lately too, and going to church more frequently. It seems to balance me, and get me in a good place after a week of work and family crisis. In my last few scans, I've read Genesis, Exodus, Job, Mark, and I'm in Samuel 1 at the moment. So far, Mark has been the most entertaining, as it reads like Jesus' Greatest Hits, while Job was probably more thought-provoking.
I also bought and watched Greatest Wrestling Superstars of the '80s, which was cool.
I still haven't been able to find the balance between being on the PC at work ,and being on the PC at home. It's tough for me to get online after staring at the damned monitor at the office all day. Am I the only one with that problem? Although, I think I'm slowly starting to get there.
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