When I was a kid a loud BOOM woke my parents and knocked out the power to a couple of blocks (my brother and I slept through it). A drunk teenage driver was going fast enough that he lost control of the car and slid sideways into a utility pole with enough force to split his mustang in half and knock down the pole. Some of our neighbors managed to keep the kid from bleeding out before paramedics arrived but he didn't make it.

I think the image of that scene was the reason my early driving years were full of all sorts of rules and restrictions.

That sounds similar to the way that my godfather's daughter (and my honorary cousin) got the head injury that ended up killing her five years after the accident--she was driving home from a party down a rural road, drove off the road into a light pole. Normally, the pole would have been knocked down, but the farmer whose property it was on was so fed up with drivers knocking it over that he had cemented it into the ground. So, Laurie ended up wrapping the car around it and sending her head through the windshield. She lost most of her short-term memory and was barely mobile for her remaining years.

That happened when I was around 20 years old, and I've been paranoid about both not drinking when driving and with wearing a seatbelt ever since.

The other time I remember hearing a BOOM at home was when Mom and I were eating dinner one summer evening. The house shook, and we immediately went out the back door and looked northeast, where the noise came from, as did the entire rest of the block. Turns out a retaining tank at the Shell Oil refinery about 17 miles away had blown up, obliterating the five workers who were working on the tank and breaking windows up to 10 miles away.

Why am I awake?

Once I was walking in Evanston when I heard a loud boom (it sounded like a cannon going off). I turned around to see a small Toyota spinning in circles, as it had just been hit by an Explorer (the Toyota had run a light). There were four people in the Toyota - all were injured, but all were ambulatory. A boy was bleeding from the head.

The Explorer had a small dent on its fender - the driver was uninjured.

Seeing that made me paranoid about small cars.

It's a Sunday--unless you're Tom Scola, you don't have to work today! Of course, this means that my sleeping pattern is in its usual screwed up mode so I'll be exhausted at work on Monday, but I'm used to that by now.

I can't stop playing Bejeweled--I'll be hearing "Go!" and "Level Up!" in my sleep.

It's a Sunday--unless you're Tom Scola, you don't have to work today!

Ahem.

(Not here, really. No, really. But sending sleep~ma from far-far-away to all who wants them.)

Hi, Nilly!! I was thinking about weekend, and was being all American-biased. I really should know better, especially around here!

(I love the fact that we have people from all over the world here, and should never presume otherwise when posting.)

And now I'm finally getting tired, so I guess I'll be turning in. Good night (well, early morning here--good afternoon, Nilly!), all!

Night, Kathy!

American here, and I've got work to do later on today. Not enough to warrant driving in to the office, though.

My BOOM story occurred when I was about 12, and some kids missed the curve and plowed into our neighbor's HOUSE, leaving great tracks across our front yard. Nobody hurt, surprisingly - the kids were able to get out and flee (which, why bother? It wasn't a stolen car or anything, and there's no running away from that kind of boo-boo). The house and the car were hurt, of course. Neighbors got a new living room.

My BOOM story

It occurs to me that today is the sixth anniversary of my BOOM story. Although, there really wasn't much of a boom. I was sitting in the living room of my old apartment watching television that night, when I noticed a car turn around in our driveway. Shrug. Then another car turned around in our driveway, and another, and another... My curiosity was piqued, so I took a look through the window blinds, and discovered that the apartment house down the road (our next door neighbor out there in the turf fields) was surrounded by fire trucks (which had blocked the road, which is why everyone was turning around). I put on a coat and walked over to watch. For awhile it looked like they had gotten it under control, but then the fire got into the walls, and the place went up like a tinder box. At the time, it was the oldest building in Slocum, built in the 1840's, so it was made of old, well-dried wood. (After it was gone, my landlady's house became the oldest building in Slocum.)

It turned out that the fire was started by one tenants' kids playing with matches.

It's still snowing, although there's not much accumulation yet, and it's windy as all get out here.