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Okay.. so Louie and I had plans to actually go out Tuesday night without any of the three kids. I don’t think that has happened since last December! I bought tickets to a Styx/Foreigner/Def Leppard concert and we were SOOO excited to go.
It was lawn seating, but that is what we’ve always done at this pavilion. We knew scattered “showers” were likely so we brought a tarp to sit on/pull over us in case of rain. Well, we got there at 6:10 and at 6:15 it started to rain lightly. About ten minutes later you heard this LONNNNNNNNNNNG low rumble of thunder and the whole place literally went “ooooooooooooh…” and it was a little tense. Then, boom!, the sky dropped and it was coming down in sheets of water! I don’t think I have ever seen that much rain!! Louie and I were struggling to hold the tarp down over us (we were sitting in two low beach chairs) because the wind suddenly whipped up and was bringing rain in from all directions. It sounded like a freight train was coming and I immediately had mental images of a tornado coming straight at us. “Auntie Em! Auntie Em!!” Then the hail started. Yes, I said hail. It was coming down so hard that it was bouncing off the ground and hitting us from up under the tarp. I was yelling at Louie to pull the back down and he couldn’t heard me… from a whopping 12 inches away! That is how loud it was. I have never been through something like that. It lasted about 5 minutes and then it was totally silent. I was hesitant to peek out from under our cover. Then rain continued for a while, but all the people were now quietly walking around as if in shock. There was mess everywhere… stuff had washed down the hill. There was an entire untouched funnel cake laying in ruins next to our blanket. Lol.. Hmm they must have bought it just before the storm hit and abandoned it while running for cover. The back of my right shoulder was red from being beaten with hail. It was just ridiculous. They announced over some crummy PA that they would make a decision about the concert soon. Then, the sirens started. It was creepy. I heard at least three different emergency vehicles arrive. Our friends, Ben and Cynthia, were able to find us in the ruins of lawn seating. They had still been in their vehicle when the hail hit. After about ten more minutes, during which Ben discovered the concession stands were without power, it was announced the concert had been cancelled. It was short and sweet.. basically canceled, will be redone, please leave NOW! People started to mill about, gathering up their stuff, and trying to wring things out since the rain had stopped. The place just emptied in one big mass. Everyone was calm… more like in shock I think, so it wasn’t a stampede or anything. We passed tents that were in shambles on our way out. The metal poles were bent and the whole unit was laying about 50 ft down the street from where it had been earlier as we passed through it in a security check.
Came home and found this story on our local news…
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/1728315/ Hmm at least that explains all the sirens. The whole thing was unreal and eerie.  |
Archive for the “General” CategoryRobert kindly pointed out that Internet Explorer can really make a mess with the theme on our site. It only tends to do so in a smaller window, but once I saw it I had to do something! So… I’m customizing a new theme. As always, if you see something that doesn’t work the way you’d expect or have questions, please tell me. I might not be aware, and you’ll be doing me a favor. This is quoted from our local weather website…. “At the Raleigh-Durham International Airport, the thermometer read 104 and the index was calculated at 112.” And today is supposed to be the fourth day of it! At 7:30 in the morning, it’s already 80 degrees. We’re heading to a pool playdate at a friend’s house early this morning so we can head for cover in her nice a/c- cooled house for a break and lunch. There will be no typical poolside picnic today! I remember not having a/c when I was little. My parents would hang sheets up over the windows on days like this and the temp would drop like 10 degrees immediately. Lol…sheets and a fan could do wonders.
Jul
17
2007
 
Bye Bye Blog Spam … and Louie Thinks Out LoudPosted by: Louie in General, InformationalI’ve had Akismet for quite some time on my own blog and it’s worked wonders. Seems that our family blog has been found by spammers so it has just been implemented here as well. It’s amazing what you can do for free/extremely cheap these days. Thanks to Linux (specifically CentOS) we can have our own web server at home that runs an very reliable and well-supported operating system. Thanks to WordPress we can put this wonderful site out there easily. Those are just the major players among many who have contributed to what you see here. The good folks in the Open Source and Free Software communities are the ‘hippies’ of this age. They are a part of a larger movement that believes knowledge should be free, transparent, and easily accessible. Without them there would be no internet as it exists today. Our little family web log is the product of at least hundreds of thousands - perhaps millions - of these individuals who have contributed their efforts toward the cause of making knowledge free to humanity. Not all have done this for purely humanitarian reasons, but the underlying cause is one that I believe is very noble. If there is one fundamental positive change to humanity that is the least noticed by the average person, this has to be it. The internet can be disturbing. Technology can be painful. It’s so easy to miss what’s going on underneath it all! As a glass-half-full person with many friends who have directly involved themselves in this change (and involved me to a small extent) I hope I can help people think about it for a moment. I’ve finished working on our photo gallery! (See the link to the right.) Pictures are up for April, May, and June of this year. For security reasons I’m requiring registrations for the gallery. Feel free to register if you’re a family member or friend of ours! Once you’ve registered I’ll get an email and will approve your registration ASAP. All of this is free, and we own/control it all. NEW FEATURE We haven’t updated the site much lately as we have been trying to take care of two sick kids. The girls had been struggling with runny noses, fevers, and a bad cough for a few days. They just couldn’t shake it as they have in the past so I took them to the Pediatrician last Thursday. Turns out they both have ear infections- Shealyn with a bad double ear and Kaitrinn in the early stages. They both started on antibiotics and showed improvement over the weekend. I was able to send Kaitrinn back to school on Friday finally. She had missed the previous four days! Yesterday was a teacher workday so there was no school. What do I find this morning? Two grumpy kids and Kaitrinn with a fever of 101 again. Argh…. I give up! Send us get well thoughts and stay away from the sick house Lol… Comments work, but I’ve gone into the code and changed things to make it clear where you can post them (adding an “Add Yours!” below each post). I keep my own blog with my geeky stuff here, but family stuff will show up on this one from now on. I might actually cross-post some things since my friends visit the other one a lot. Needless to say I haven’t posted to it a lot lately since we’ve been a bit busier than usual. I’m sure everyone understands. Okay, so after mentioning it to several of you, I’m going to start sharing this page address. Knowing people will be viewing it gives us more incentive to finish it! Lol… The next steps are to add photo albums and information specific to Shealyn’s care (such as signs of low blood sugar, how to give injections, and her latest dosage ratios). There are ‘categories’ in the right column to take you to the posts on each one of us. I’m sure Louie will be adding his soon. Feel free to browse around and add comments as you’d like. At least I think you can add comments already… That would mean I’d have to have technical knowledge and I leave that to my dear husband. =) Oh Louie? Though we may also use it to share other things, the main purpose of this site is to share information with friends and family about our daughter Shealyn, who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes on February 9th, 2007. She’s handling things wonderfully (even better than Kaycee and I!) and continues to amaze us with her patience and ability to accept plenty of unwelcome additions to her daily routine. I’m considering a way to easily track Shealyn’s glucose levels here along with sharing/updating information on her daily regimen. Paper versions of things always get outdated, so the web makes a wonderful place to keep things current. What I create may come in the form of a WordPress plugin which is something other people could use for the same purposes if they find it helpful. All of this is just beginning. I appreciate you all bearing with us as we work through it! Thanks and love, |
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