All day it was cloudy and sort of dreary. Late in the afternoon, the sky darkened and became more threatening. As Linda and Kennan left for counseling, the rain began. The National Weather Service usually has a scrawl across the TV screen for warnings. I already knew that our area was under a flood watch because the rain was supposed to be really heavy and really concentrated.
Kristin and I were watching Texas Justice which is a total hoot ... try it, you'll like it! Afterwards, Judge Judy came on and about that time, the TV squawked a loud warning sound and the screen went black except for a message that said "This is a message from the emergency broadcast system, please tune in to Channel 2 ..."
So I switched the channel and the message was that our area was under a tornado warning, not a watch. Well, this was going on with the other TVs on in the house and I guess TB heard the noise and came in. "There's a tornado warning," I said to him.
So we all went into the hallway where our family pictures are. It seemed the safest place to go since we have no basement. The hall is away from all windows and I'm not sure about how strong the ceiling is but it seemed the best place to go. TB went around and cracked some of the windows.
We waited. Heidi was irritable -- I'm sure being in that tight hallway wasn't helping -- and Billy was giving his take on why opening the windows was a good idea. Heidi was snapping at him to shut up! We waited there about 15 minutes or so while TB watched what was happening on TV. He saw some information about a tornado moving through Presidential Lakes. That's just a few miles from us.
The sky began to lighten up and the thunder went away. We were lucky.
Heidi wanted to know why the weather is so weird in NJ now. Well, it's not just New Jersey. The weather is weird in a lot of places around the country and even in the world. I know friends in Europe have suffered through some really hot weather. Example -- in Austria the temperatures have been over 100 sometimes and they don't have air conditioning because they never needed it before!
And then there was this story about rogue waves but I'll save comment on that for another day.
What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public.
-- Vilhjalmur Stefansson, "Discovery", 1964
This quote seems pretty straightforward to me: all advertising is deceiving or deceitful. The hamburger never looks the same way in the wrapper as it does in the picture!
Ten Things You Wish You Knew When You Were Younger
I wish I’d known how hard it was to lose weight the older I got
I wish I’d known how important my own health was – maybe I wouldn’t have smoked or gained weight
I wish I’d known how easily it is to fall out of touch with friends; I would have made a stronger effort
I wish I’d known that interpreting long hours without a break would cause disabling injuries in my hands and shoulders
I wish I’d known not to destroy my journals
I wish I’d known how easy it was to destroy my credit
I wish I’d known not to max out on credit cards
I wish I’d known more about mathematics when I was younger
I wish I’d known to continue going to church in spite of disillusionment and disappointment
I wish I’d known alcoholism ran so rampant in my family and that I might have been able to talk to my cousins and share our experiences
There's not much else in the news this week except the Democratic Convention, which I admit I AM watching, although I have my doubts as to the usefulness of conventions these days, and those are my questions...
Are you going to watch either/both of the conventions? Are there particular people whose speeches you are looking forward to?
I don’t like to watch conventions. They tend to be noisy, very partisan and boring. I’ll read about it on the Net or watch it on the news
And given that we do all know who the candidates are going to be before going into the conventions, and I can't imagine we're going to get any surprises, is all the expense, security, hoopla and press worth it?
I sure as heck don’t think so. And I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop … something awful happening at one of the conventions!