xtremeroswellia

I took the local storm spotting workshop this morning at Richland, and it was awesome. I learned a lot, and I took ten pages of notes. I also ran by the library on my way home and checked out two books on storms just so I can study some more. I've bookmarked about a dozen sites that have to do with storm spotting/chasing.

I. Am. Excited.

My love/fascination of storms comes from two main things: Twister (which is one of my favorite movies EVER). And secondly--I live in Central Illinois. Which means I've been in so many storms in my 26 years I couldn't begin to count them all. You see when I was younger, my parents would send my sister and I to the basement when a warning went out. Then they would proceed to go stand on the deck and watch the storm--which is my own inclination and has been for several years now. I guess I always thought, "Wow, if they're out there it must be really exciting." And it is.

I'm not sure how to explain it, but I have a sincere love for weather that scares most people. I love storms. LOVE them. I feel calm and yet alive and excited at the same time. And I've always been in tune with the bigger storms. I can literally feel them coming on. Probably something I picked up from living here for so long.

It's funny, I always knew I was interested in doing this, but during the workshop today I felt something within me ignite--an excitement. A buried passion I hadn't even fully realized I had. And I can't wait to pursue it.

So yeah. No bad weather here so far. Here's the next part of Not the Time.

( Not the Time, part two. )

Bree and Dem~

Just wanted to say that there's a tornado watch out for us right now and the clouds are really dark. According to the Doppler radar, there's a line of strong storms headed straight for us. If I'm on late, or not on, that's probably why.

So I went to Chicago yesterday with my parents and my mom's best friend LaAnda. We went to 'A Taste of Chicago' because Sheryl Crow was giving a free concert yesterday evening. It was an uneventful trip up there (though it was a long three hour drive).

There was really nothing to do AT a Taste of Chicago until Sheryl Crow played. So we were there three hours ahead of time, bored and hot (because it was in the mid-90's). My dad and I rode the ferris wheel once. I don't deal well with heights, but it was my idea to go on the ride. Stupid me. I'm lucky I didn't have an anxiety attack on the ride. I kept my eyes closed pretty much the whole time and prayed that our cart wouldn't plummit to the ground below.

Sheryl Crow was supposed to play at 5:30. She didn't start until 6:30. It was quite annoying. Then we couldn't even get close enough to actually -see- her on the stage. We had to watch on one of those big screens. She played for an hour and a half, sang all of her most popular songs, plus a couple of her unreleased tracks like 'Home' (which is one of my favs), and 'Leaving Las Vegas.' It was a good concert, but honestly, given the circumstances I wished I'd been at home watching her on tv in my nice air conditioned house.

So we immediately headed for our car once she finished singing, which was about 8:00. It took us an hour to get through traffic and to find our way back out of Chicago. At about 9:30 we made it to Joliet, and stopped and ate dinner at Steak and Shake. Got in the car again around 10:15. I fell asleep in the passenger seat of the car (my mom and her friend were in the backseat talking and my dad was driving). Before I fell asleep it had started to sprinkle and lightening off in the distance.

I woke up at 11:21, very alarmed because there was rain and hail hitting the windshield so hard the cd player could no longer be heard. After a few moments of driving in the torrential downpour, Dad pulled the car off the road like everyone else was doing. It was at that point that the wind started blowing SO hard from the West that we had horizontal rain. Let me tell you, that was terrifying. And then the car began to rock even though it was in park position and Dad grabbed a hold of the steering wheel. There had to have been a tornado close by.

My mom looks at me and says, "This is your fault, you're the one who insisted we go to Chicago." She didn't say it meanly, but I couldn't help but retort, "Actually it's your fault. If you had let me go to New York to see SAFE you never would have been out in this storm at all."

By Midnight, we were headed toward home once more and the storm had passed over us for the most part by then. By the time we took LaAnda home, we didn't get home ourselves til nearly 2:30 a.m. I took a shower and went to bed and passed out until 11 this morning.