Empathizing With thehorsefarmer and thebarngoddess

Back near the number one post on By The Numbers, I did a post about thehorsefarmer and the barngoddess and a special horse that is the headline picture on their blog. In that post, I commented on how they live up in southwest Missouri in the middle of tornado alley.

Some years ago, a tornado pretty much decimated their place and, at the time, I was talking to thehorsefarmer and commented, "I am sorry you lost your stuff." He commented back, "I didn't lose it, it is just spread out over 30 acres." Gotta love that sense of humor.

So anyway, I live down in the Birthplace of Speed in the Sunshine State and while hurricanes are something I deal with several times a year, tornadoes are a relatively rare occurence. During the many years I lived down Naples way, I would suspect I experienced a couple dozen hurricanes but not one tornado comes to mind.

Sorry, need to take a moment to digress. If you clicked on the hurricane link, you will notice it outlines Andrew's path in four distinct locations. You get the idea.

I must admit I was not in the Sunshine State during Andrew's passing. I was not even in the United States. My daughter's Mom, myself, thefoamguy and the blondebombshell were visiting my younger sister and thefrenchdoctor on the West Coast of France.

My Mom and a couple of her friends were down from the Ozarks staying at our coastal Florida home while we were overseas. We were not even going to see each other, just pass like ships in the night, with them arriving the day after we left and leaving the day before we got home.

Well, as it turns out, Andrew decided to come on through about two weeks into our European Vacation and Mom and her Lunch Bunch friends decided to evacuate to MickeyMouseLand to ride the storm out. thejeepjunkie, the 7 month pregant Sun Goddess and the Kid were living in Fort Lauderdale at the time and decided to venture over to Naples to ride the storm out, no not 'Riding the Storm Out', but ride the storm out.

Turns out thejeepjunkie, et al, hooked up with my buddy, Dr. Dudley and his 7 month pregnant wife and those boys had a helluva hurricane party.

In the meantime, I am oblivious to what is happening in South Florida, we all are enjoying the inebriations offered by thefrenchdoctor. The morning Andrew arrived, we wake up and thefrenchdoctor tells me there is a Cat 4 hurricane heading for South Florida. NeedlessToSay, I start freaking out. Luckily, there is a Doctor In The House and I get some quite adequate medicine to calm me down. We decided then to evacuate ourselves, we went to Paris. Yeah, during Hurricane Andrew, my wife and I evacuated to Paris, France.

Sooo,

Anyway

After moving to Sl-Ocala in 2003, I realized tornadoes were more frequent there, but I never really felt threatened, big house, top of a hill and a general feeling the I am in control of my destiny.

About 4:30 pm this evening, as I am checking out CareerBuilder.com, I hear on my local country music station that there is a Tornado Warning for just about everywhere within 15 miles of me. This never happens.

I gotta tell you, I was apprehensive for several long hours. You see, I live near the beach and there is not alot of shelter here. The Taj Mahal doesn't offer alot of "interior closet space" or even "interior walls" to take shelter in or near.

Well, I did everything but tether down that olestationbus. I mean got glass moved against a wall, found some plastic sheeting, should it be needed, cleared out an area around the only interior corner wall in the Taj Mahal, got out a plastic trash bag to put this old laptop in, you get the idea, I was extremely apprehensive.

Bullshit. I was scared silly. At my advanced age, the last thing I needed was an unpredicatable tornado deciding my fate. I am sufficiently capable of doing that myself, and with the help of my family and friends, the federal government be damned.

So I logged onto weather.com and got the interactive loop going and watched this color Orange storm pass on through and talked a bit with My Maker about the events going on in my life at this time and asked that Being to keep an eye on me.

And that Being did.

I survived the storm and then decided to get some images, after all, what would you all be reading, other than this excellent post by 'Life of Jason' about some loser in the Ozarks, if you didn't have an interest in this?

These next two shots were through the window of my bedroom looking toward the West.

This one is fairly tame,

But this one, shot is in quick succession, and pretty harsh. At first I thought I had moved that camera around until I checked out the roof line of my neighbor's condo and that facsia line is still straight.

Then I remembered I have video capabilities. You might want to mute this one unless you want to hear that country music station's advertisements selling a Suzuki--sorry its a Mitzubishi-- at 1/2 price. Seems to be a generic ad these days.


This one is shot out of my front door and has some pretty good graphics as well as sound. When I reviewed this I was trying to figure out why the flash kept going off on my camera. I soon realized it was the lightning from the storm.


This video is post, beachside, storm, out over the Atlantic and great sound and lighting effects. Love the color of the beige building right at the beginning of this piece, and I knew all was well when I heard the birds singing...


So, horsefarmer and barngoddess, needlesstosay, I continue to have respect, even newfoundrespect for the, seemingly, every day aspects you have in your life. Thanks for keeping me aware of them.

And above all, Peace and Celebrate Life.