Afternoon, everyone.
Well, it was a long night, with the last of the severe thunderstorms passing through at just about 5:00 am. There was one brief tornado touchdown about 8 miles from the house but the funnel only lasted about 20 seconds before it dissipated. The family was sleeping but I have one of those air horns that I told them I would blow to get up and down to the basement and I came close but there were never any vortex signatures after that first one. Had some whopping thunderstorms with 2.17 inches of rain and 55 mph winds but it wasn't bad overall. This is always the most nervous month in Alabama since we've had more tornado deaths in March than any other month.
Phillip, glad to hear your wife can move her leg even a little. How is her pain level? I'm with Ray on those late night talks. When we knew Jean was dying we had many of those. The good thing was she died with noting left unsaid between us. It's a good thing for all spouses to do.
Ray, it's only been four years for me and, even though I was lucky enough to find the second love of my life, I will miss Jean forever.
Jeffrey, hope all goes well at the doc's office
Paul, living in upstate New York this time of the year is just a lovely experience, isn't it?
Of course, I don't know which is worse, worrying about getting killed by a tornado or getting killed by your car sliding around on the ice. At least with the tornado, you're warm when it gets you.
Tom, glad the girl was not too badly hurt. Having been in construction project management, I can feel your pain.
Ken, nice when and electric bill goes down. Dryers are huge consumers of electricity and the new ones are way more energy efficient.
Ray, sounds like the Yaris is everything you expected in terms of fuel economy. How doe she drive and ride? Since I bought our house in 2006, I had to buy all new appliance too since I had sold everything in California. We got the most energy efficient ones they had and I think I only have two or thee incandescent bulbs left in the house. These kinds of things really do work. My house is 3400 sq ft and my electric bill in the heat of summer is usually only about $200. I'm investigating whether replacing my less efficient heat pump to see if the saving will pencil out. I think the payback time on that one might be too long though.
The storms have passed now and we have partly cloudy skies with a temperature of 64. The cold front is trailing the original squall line by about 500 miles, kind of weird thing, so we should drop about 15 degrees once it gets here. As for now, I'm just glad we didn't get test twice in two weeks.
