Another Day That's Far Too Rainy and Windy

Hello again.

So, first off Id like to express my frustration. For some reason the pictures I posted last entry aren't showing up. They did last time when I looked at the blog immediately after posting them. But just now, I got on in order to post quickly before I have to work, and the pictures did not show up. It just had the rectangular outline where they should be and had the little logo in the center that pops up when the pictures don't load. I refreshed the page; still nothing. I opened it in Google Chrome and in Firefox (my default browser is Safari) and still nothing. I don't know if it's the internet where I am (just now it's also having trouble; I'm trying to open another tab and it's taking forever, and the auto-save function at the bottom of the page as I'm writing this is saying it "Could not contact Blogger.com. Saving and publishing may fail. Retrying...", so I don't if it's just that my current internet connection is just not working well, or that Blogger/Blogspot is just not working well. But I really hope that my pictures are actually up there and are viewable. We'll just have to see...

Okay, so I've had another tab opened on my blog for a minute or so now, and some of the pictures are viewable. Hopefully this just means that my internet here is slow and is taking a while loading them to the page. Because if it's not that, if it's that no matter where, through what browser, and using what kind of internet, they'll take this long to load, that's a bummer. We'll see.

It's been a few days since I've posted. I had a very, very busy weekend.

Friday afternoon I was here posting and hanging out 'til about 9:00 (I did get a bit of The Mist read, but probably wont have time to post about it now; maybe I will later tonight). Then, I went home and finally fell asleep at around 11. At 3:30 (am) my alarm started buzzing. I was here at Starbucks at 4:30. After an unreasonably long-feeling 8 hour shift, I was off at 1. Then I drove 3 hours into the mountains to go to a choral festival that my girlfriend was in. An hour or two later, I was back on the road heading home (this time with her to keep me company). On the way back, I got a call from one of the supervisors at another local Starbucks. One of their employees had a bit of laryngitis, and I was asked if I could cover her shift the next morning from 6:30 to 11:00. After a pretty good dinner with of pizza and wings (with my girlfriend, Lulu), I headed home to try to get some sleep before the next morning.

At 5:45, when my alarm was going off, I had a bit of a problem. I had put my work clothes in the dryer the previous night, and had completely expected that my parents (who were my transportation to work) would be up before I was with enough time to put the work clothes in the dryer so I could wear them. My parents, who had completely expected that all they'd have to do in the morning was wake up with enough time to make a cup of coffee before driving me, woke up at 5.45, when I did.*

Due to this, I was stuck with 20 minutes before I had to leave and no clean work clothes.

Luckily, being inventive, I ended up using an old pair of black slacks and one of my brothers polos. The slacks were from all the way back when I worked at Panera, and no longer fit well. They weren't too short (not unworkable, anyway), and weren't too itght in the legs either. The problem was that the waist was a bit too small. So I ended up zipping them most of the way up, and just putting on a belt. They stayed up, and as long as I didn't tuck my shirt in you couldn't see the fact that they were unbuttoned. The polo worked too. My brother, although a good 6 years younger than me, is a bit heavier than I am, and wears his shirts loose. So, his youth extra large fit me (I usually wear an adult medium).

I got to work, and ended up having to stay a half an hour later, because the girl who was scheduled to come in right before my shift ended overslept. It wasn't too bad, though; all the people working were really nice, and their store is a drive through, so wearing the headset was a pretty cool novelty. And their store is humongous, so it was a little hard to figure out where everything was.

I left work, and my mother and I stopped by a store on the way home for her to get stuff for her classroom. I got a text from Lulu saying that she was at the store I just left; apparently she forgot that my shift had already ended. But, after stopping home for an hour or so, I left to meet her for coffee (at a second Starbucks), and we ended up getting lunch while we were out. At lunch, I got a call from one of the employees at my Starbucks, asking if I could cover a shift for him that night. I obliged, not having plans, not wanting to say no, and wanting the extra money.

At this point it was raining, and I had to walk through it back to my car (it was still at Starbucks and Lulu had to leave lunch early to get a rehearsal). I got home, had an hour to chill (and to put on my work clothes, which had been dried), and the head out to work again (making it that I'd been to three different Starbucks locations that day).

Work itself was uneventful; what was eventful was the storm. It gradually rained harder and harder, and then the wind picked up, (literally) sending out outside tables and chairs flying, and narrowly missing a few customers. The thunder and lightning started, and we started hearing that the county directly southwest of us had a tornado warning. On my ten minute break, while looking at the three foot wide puddle river running next to our store, I got a text from my father saying that we had a tornado warning now, as well as flash-flood warnings. Customers were talking about having to drive through hail to get here.

It turned out that there were several tornadoes in the previously mentioned county, as well as the southern part of our county. My mothers coworker in the county east of us had a tornado crest the hill behind her house, lost power, and had the police evacuate people from houses on a few streets in her neighborhood.

Meanwhile, it was pouring. On the drive home, it was raining so hard that the highest setting on the windshield wipers couldn't keep up at all, and you couldn't see the markings on the roads because of all the water. The weather stations said that we were getting 2-3 inches per hour. There were puddles the size of parking lots in the middle of the expressway. It was ridiculous.

And then later this week it's supposed to be 30 degrees warmer than the average lately, and sunny. Crazy.

*This little asterisk means that I have a note. At this point I continued this blog at night at Starbucks after work. I was interrupted by of our regular customers coming over to talk to me, and the Lulu showed up, so I couldn't finish before work.

And that's it for tonight. It's kinda late, and I have to get milk on the way home. I'll actually post about The Mist tomorrow afternoon though; I'm walking here after school and hanging out until I can get a ride home. Talk to you then.

'Til next time.