I Don't Remember Moving to Kansas While I Slept

There's no finer way to spend a Monday afternoon and evening than to listen to tornado sirens blare. Until recently, I didn't know my city had tornado sirens, and really, whoever designed them should be flogged with a whole-wheat knout because they sound like wind chimes, not heralds of whirling death. If I hadn't seen the tornado warning plastered in the upper-right corner of my TV screen, I would've thought that unfamiliar noise was nothing more than my neighbor's wind chimes. Perhaps the members of the Department of Public Safety should retool their sirens so that they aren't mistaken for meditation and sleep aids. Just a thought.

No tornadoes touched down in my academic ghetto, thank God, but one did wreak havoc in nearby Capitola. This spring has seen two tornadoes in my county in ten days. Prior to this spate of severe weather, Tallahassee hadn't seen a tornado since 1954. It makes me uneasy. There are no storm cellars in Florida, and I don't relish the thought of dying beneath two stories of rubble and my thunder-footed upstairs neighbor's bloated corpse.

I don't know what was creepier: the sirens or the disembodied voice that floated from them once the storm had passed. "All clear. All clear. The Department of Public Safety has issued an all-clear." It reminded me of "The Regulators" and their innocuous and terrible vans.

I'd be happier if I never experienced that again, please and thank you.

As for today, I'm going to eat fried chicken and Doritos and chocolate eggs and write fic. Et Tu is blossoming, and I want to make hay while the weather permits. And Sam Flack and "C Is for Confession" also needs finishing, and then I need to get Dean out of the shower before he prunes like the Sunsweet mascot...

And, and, and. But life is good with so many hamsters on the wheel, you know?