I know it's been a few days...

Since I've posted anything.  It's been one of those weeks where it's been up one minute and down the next. 

Monday was such a bad day for our nation, with the bombing in Boston.  My first thought was that it would probably turn out to be domestic and that it might be environmental activists.  Don't ask me why I think that, I just do.  And as Otter says, we've all learned to listen to my "feelings" as we call it, because I'm generally right.  Not always, but most of the time.  However, until the lowlifes are caught and interrogated, the motives are unknown.  It was wrong, it was inexcusable and it was criminal.  Because of what happened in Oklahoma City 18 years ago tomorrow at 9:02 a.m., there has been a lot of "local" reaction.  It would have been big news anyway, but there is that local connection and it's been covered in a different way here than it seems to be in the rest of the country.

We've also been dealing with weather issues.  The bad kind.  It's been fairly cool but yesterday it was in the 80's.  Which is actually really bad this time of year, warm days like that when there are weather fronts moving in that are cooler are perfect breeding grounds for tornados and bad storms.  We were under a tornado watch most of yesterday and we expected rain although the chances of tornados was not actually high.  Otter worked yesterday afternoon and was scheduled to get off at 9:30 p.m.  Because of the weather issues, I took her to work and picked her up.  It was starting to rain around 7:30 or 8:00, and at that point it looked like all the storms that had already fired up were going to be heading straight north and would miss us.  There was one storm that was in the far southern part of the state and it was probably going to get to us, but it was expected well after midnight and by that time the temperature has generally cooled down enough so that the tornado chances are down considerably and sometimes non-existant.  I left about 8:30 to get her, it only takes about 15 minutes from the house but I expected them to close up early.  I got there about 8:45 or so and at just before 9:00, the lights went out in the store so I knew that she'd be out soon.  We got home about 9:15 and it was rainy but not bad.  We actually enjoyed watching the lightning we could see off in the distance.  The south storm was moving slowly and we didn't expect much although we were warned about hail and it did look like it was going to be in our area instead of going east of us.  At about midnight, I woke up for a potty trip and heard what sounded like hail hitting the roof but nothing else.  I was awake for a while after that, and I heard nothing but rain and there was a little lightning/thunder.  But nothing else, at least not that concerned me.  When we got up this morning, I turned the tv on about 5:30 to news reports of a house less than a mile from ours that had lost it's roof when a tornado touched down.  The storm came right over our house not too long after I think I went back to sleep, and we were literally right in the flight path of the tornadic storm and we heard nothing.  Nothing.  BECAUSE THE SIRENS WERE NEVER ACTIVATED.  AT ALL.  The tornado was small, but small can still be dangerous.  It apparently disappated shortly after taking off the roof and then another one sprouted shortly after it had passed over us and was a little east of the Tulsa area.  At that point, the tornado was probably an EF1 which is the next-to-smallest official size but it did quite a bit of damage.  Houses damaged badly, a train blown off the tracks, there was at least one mobile home that was picked up and deposited on a "regular" house that was next door to it.  No injuries have been reported, but everyone in this area is asking one question:  WHY WERE THE SIRENS NOT ACTIVATED?  No reason has been given at this point.  But there had better be, and it had better be a good one.  Even though it was not a big tornado, it was one.  The sirens should have gone off well before the actual tornado because the storm was already meeting all the signs that tell the forecasters that it could sprout one at any moment and the protocal is to sound them as the probable tornadic storms get to a set distance from each area of the towns in the path.  It's actually a good system.  When they use it correctly.  The tv stations were broadcasting the alerts and warning people and had been for a while because they at least were concerned about the possibility of the storm becoming tornadic, but very few people were actually up at that moment watching tv because the forecast had been that it would most likely not be that dangerous by the time it got to us.  The people who lost their roof were actually up, the father had seen the news reports and got his family out of bed and down to what has been described as their basement but I think it was actually the first floor of their home.  He said that he was actually about to send the kids back upstairs to bed when he heard the tornadic winds and felt the impact on his house, not because of sirens (because he didn't hear any) and based on what he was hearing on the news - that the storm was fast moving but not as dangerous as it turned out to be.  Because he did what he did, his family is safe.  Thank God.

There was quite a bit of localized street flooding as well.  We don't have any tree damage that I can tell and the roof looks to be ok.  I heard hail but it didn't sound like it was big, just a little noisy.

I have real and serious reasons for being private on here, I'm not mentioning any specific city names for valid reasons.  We're near Tulsa, but that is kind of general.  There are a boatload of little towns and small cities around and near Tulsa.  I choose not to discuss my privacy reasons, but they are real so I'm not naming any city/town names beyond Tulsa.

The explosion is TEXAS is also a bad thing, and because of the fact that tomorrow is April 19 and the Oklahoma City Bombing was a fertilizer bomb it's also generating more "local" news that it would have normally.  I know where West is, but I don't think we've ever actually been there.  It's tiny, and the destruction was horrific.  It doesn't seem to be anything other than a fire that caused an explosion because of the nature of the plant and what it produced, foul play is not suspected.

This wasn't meant to be depressing, it's just that there have been major things happen this week and most of them are bad.