Storming Like Mad!

So anyone who lives in the Saint Louis area knows that we were hit pretty hard with storms and other "tornadic" activity last night -- and I hate this type of weather.  For our fabulous out-of-town guest, Tanya, she got one last taste of spring weather in the Midwest!  :D  (we don't get crazy weather like this back home in Washington state!)  I don't know if this is true of not, but living in a downtown building, I always feel a wee bit safer.  How many pictures have you seen of utter tornado devastation of a downtown area?  Don't we have all these tall concrete buildings around us slowing down the wind?  It's always the housing suburbs that get hit hard, right?  (and if you do indeed have a picture of this sort of devastation, would you mind not showing it to me?!)

(a picture I borrowed from stltoday.com showing some of the typical local damage -- this is a road in St Charles County)

Thankfully, I haven't heard any reports of anything bad happening in our area other than trees and a roof or two missing (no major injuries or deaths -- yeah!).  When the storms started up last night (around 6:30 or so), we were on the patio of our building enjoying the fellowship (and food!) of the wonderful folks who live in our building.  It's amazing how quickly city-wide tornado sirens can clear a deck, though!  I have just one more day of "relaxing" before Monday (June 3), the day that I start working like a mad woman.  Tanya flies back to Seattle tonight (so I want to spend the day with her!) and then tomorrow, I need to do a good clean of our place so it won't bug me in the upcoming week (and distract me from dissertating!).

So Monday is D-Day!  I appreciate all the well wishes that folks have left on Facebook -- and this blog -- and I hope that at least a few of you will visit me here every couple of days so that I feel like I will have the camaraderie of some of the fabulous, smart, and encouraging people in my life.  I know you won't be here holding my hand in person (and ghee, wouldn't that make it hard to type?) but it is nice to think that there might be a few of you looking over my shoulder making sure that I stick to the course!  I can do this!