Please allow me to interject my feelings about Mother Nature

They're talking about a derecho moving through Mississippi tomorrow night. Fun.

 

Fortunately it did not touch down. It went over the hospital and heavily populated neighborhoods with lots of trees and narrow roads.

Our son was shoot hoops at a church with friends when it went over. He said the building was shaking and lights flickering. Damage reported included power outages, downned lines, downed trees, etc.

A second storm with possible funnel is going over Huntsville now on an identical track.

 

In Texas, they call a derecho Thursday.

 

Big hailer scraped barely north of me. Storms to the north, storms to the south. We're threading the needle for now.

The hell of it is, I woke up this morning to news that everything was going to be south of I-30. So far everything has been north of it. Everything.

 

Our storms are supposed to move in around 8 p.m. and last until 3 or 4 a.m. Exactly the kind of nice, restful night you want when you're staring down back-to-back 15-hour work days.

 

Outing alert: Batman is Frederick.

 

At least Batman is still working, if not in journalism than something that's paying the bills.

 

Unlike Frederick, at least if I work 80 hours I'll get paid for 80 hours. Weeks like this suck, but they're almost like a PBS pledge drive when payday comes around.
The next couple of days are just a couple of bad set-ups — an assignment in the morning and a game in the evening both days, none of which I can blow off. And since I live an hour from Work Town, I can't exactly come back home in between. I just have to grin and bear it, and use it to my advantage to get caught up on some things.

A bigger concern is getting to work in the morning. My first assignment is at 9 a.m. and this storm is supposed to come through in the wee hours of the night and morning. If it's as bad as advertised, that hour drive to Work Town might be impassable.

 

State Farm has had so many claims in the last 24 from my workplace alone they are calling in a special hail appraiser next week.

 

We had a bad hail storm roll through here about 10 years ago. It hit right at rush hour, so almost everybody in a 30-mile radius had some form of damage to their cars, and the quarter-sized hail did a number to roofs. The insurance companies were setting up assembly line claims desks at repair shops and signing checks without any fuss whatsoever. I wasn't sure if we had claimable damage or not, but I made appointments anyway. We got a new roof out of it and I got the last $2,500 of my car (which had some dents but nothing too major) paid off.
Best. Hail storm. Ever.

 

Did you smack the shit out of a quarter panel with a baseball bat when you bought it? If you had done so, you wouldn’t be worried about hail or busting through brush because, hey, if already had some cosmetic damage.

 

When the storm let up Wednesday, I sort of had that mentality because I use a truck for a truck, and I plan to keep it a long time. But every time I look at it, I see more and more damage sticking out like a sore thumb. I've had it six weeks, and only have 2K miles on it. It's getting fixed.