Pounded

This hasn't been my best week as far as luck is concerned. One might advise oneself to stay away from casinos et al when you've put together a run like I have since getting back from Florida. Where to begin this pity party... hmmm...

My car's broke. Don't know if it's the alternator or a dead battery. If it ran... I'd take it somewhere to find out. As it turns out, it doesn't. The cord on my laptop's battery pack broke. No power to the laptop means no work getting done. No car means no Apple store, no Apple store means no battery, no battery means... well, you get it. Now my computer is eating disk space at an alarming rate and for reasons I'm not sure of. Disk Utility has clued me in on the fact that it needs repaired. No shit? I'm behind as all hell at work. I've been poured on twice riding my bike home and my stupid ass has me in a pickle with the misses.

I need a kick in the ass or a change of fortunes quickly. I feel it's a lot like mountain biking or anything I'm sure. I'm going to use the analogy of mountain biking because it's still fresh in my mind. I can't say I'm at all comfortable on a bike. Add trails, trees, creek crossings, etc... and it's nerve-wracking for me. But I've taken two tips to heart and they've helped me immensely: 1) where your eyes go, your bike will follow, and 2) when going down a steep hill, stick the seat between your knees and hold on. It's that focus that gets me through most ventures, but there are inevitably encounters where focus shifts from being on the trail to doing anything and everything not to fall down. It's in these situations that trouble strikes... and it's often because I'm doing anything and everything to stay on the bike, that some other obstacle pops up and records the kill. I'm vulnerable. My attention is diverted and the stump becomes a perilous hazard... only because I ran into it. Had I been focused, it wouldn't have even been worth a glance.

So I've been a little more than off this past week. Above was Wednesday night. Around midnight, the tornado sirens started screaming. I was down on the couch and pulled up the radar. Sure enough, there's a classic "hook" formation bearing down on Grandview. This is usually the telltale sign of tornadic activity due to the heavy rotation. So Erica comes downstairs and after hanging out on the back porch for the initial brunt of the storm, we retreat to the basement just in case things got hairy. They never really did, but the lightning and the rain was unreal, so I sat out on the front porch and took some pictures and watched the rain.