Fridays Feast 9/28/07

Satellite dish fixer called at 7 this morning. A very nice and polite sounding young man. He wanted to know what the problem was with our dish so he could pack the proper possible-replacement-parts.

I said "A moose banged his antlers on the dish. We think it's been knocked out of alignment."

He said "Excuse me, what?"

I said "A moose banged his antlers on the dish."

He said "A moose......banged???"......silence.

I said "His antlers, yes, on the dish." A pause of disbelief on the other end.

He said "Oh wow, I better bring another dish then, just in case."

It's going to be an interesting day.


Fridays Feast

Appetizer
How are you today?
Pretty good actually.

Soup
Name 3 television shows you watch on a regular basis.
CSI, Survivor, Boston Legal

Salad
What’s the scariest weather situation you’ve experienced?
July 9, 1995 we had a 10 minute 'storm'. The neighbors and the sheriffs who were visiting the neighbors (no one has said they're good neighbors) told us it was a tornado-they saw the funnel. But the resulting damage looked more like wind shear.

We were on the other end of the Parkarosa, at Dan and Sue's house, putting bean poles up in the garden when a fierce storm came screaming down the mountains behind their house. We dashed for the front porch and watched in wonder as wind and rain suddenly lashed with the sound of a freight train and a vengeance I've never seen before. In 10 minutes it was over. It was terrifying. It was then that my nephew told us there'd been a tornado warning on the radio.

A few minutes later we discovered the big huge fir tree in the back yard had been wrenched out by the roots and thrown down on top of Dans truck. We got worried about our house, so Dan and Sweet Hubby hopped in the car to drive the mile to the other end of the Parkarosa and check things out. They came back in less than five minutes. Hundreds of trees were down on the road. They needed a chain saw.

It took a couple hours to get to the house. We discovered it was fine. In fact, I had 6 very tall and leggy tomato plants sitting in pots on the deck and they were still standing. However, our lawn was covered with hundreds of trees. The dark and spooky woods were gone. (That's what my daughters liked to call it.)

Basically, the way the neighbors tell it, a tornado touched down just across the highway from Dans house onto our big field, plowed through the center of our property-all the way to the other end, jogged around our house, then lifted back up again and dissipated. On it's way it snapped the trees off like toothpicks or yanked them out of the ground and slammed them down. Trees 400 years old and 4 to 5 feet in diameter were nothing to the wind that roared through. It wiped out 70% of our forest. Everything was laying in the same direction-which is why we speculate wind shear, because tornadoes tend to make a jumbled mess. Very weird looking. It was one of those once in 500 years events. People drove from all over to come see it.

For us, it was extremely traumatic. Especially for my husband and his siblings. They'd grown up with those trees. It completely changed our environment and gave us years of clean up to do. I used to love the sound of the wind. Now I get anxiety attacks when I hear it.

Main Course
If you could wake up tomorrow morning in another country, where would you want to be?
Australia. I've always wanted to see it.

Dessert
What do you usually wear to sleep?
A nightgown. Usually of the short, t-shirt style variety. Sometimes, if it's an especially cold night, I like to donn my leopard print satin pajamas.

Have a great day.