In my junior high building, the places we would take shelter from tornados was segregated by sex. The place where the boys were to take shelter had scalding hot water pipes above it.

Yeah, what I heard last night was that wind speeds were the highest ever recorded, and it was something in the neighborhood of a mile wide. I don't know that that's fact, but it suggests that it may have just been beyond what shelters could handle.

Beer writing! Follow your dream! I love all the sorts of jobs you had no idea existed when you were a kid and totally rock.

Maybe we can't jump up and down on the beds with abandon anymore, but we can write about beer and get paid for it. (By we I mean the Nora we)

I love that dongli shop on Etsy, thanks for the link

The skirt is exactly as pretty as I hoped. Shipping took a while--partly my fault for not responding to the seller promptly, but they're also shipping from China. 8 metres of chiffon! Whee!

JESUS JEHOSEPHAT. Surely you know if you have a screaming child in your house, no? And you know if you're on the phone? Why does it seem that someone always forgets to add one and one to get mute?

I know that a lot of northwestern Oklahoma has a few feet of soil over caliche, a soft limestone that forms in deserts. It takes blasting to build a basement. There was one storm shelter, built under the Elks Club, for the subdivision my family lived in for a year. The summer I lived there, we went to the storm shelter almost every week. Most memorable was the night that the Elks were having a luau night, and the shelter inhabitants were a mixture in kids in pajamas and drunken Elks in grass skirts.

Congrats, Nora!

The skirt is exactly as pretty as I hoped. Shipping took a while--partly my fault for not responding to the seller promptly, but they're also shipping from China.

All good to know. I am eyeing this and this

The Atlantic just posted a quick summary of the issues surrounding shelter construction in Oklahoma.

I'm out. Not the bestest verdict, but it could be oh so much worse. Lost my license, but I can pay 100 dollars within 72 hours to request a reinstatement form, and then in two weeks go back to the DMV to get a new license. Oddly, it was the prosecutor who saved my bacon by changing the charges to a bullshit one that said I didn't have a valid license, which carried a lesser penalty.

What I'm kicking myself is that I took the train in, and therefore have to take the train back --but apparently I could have gotten a waiver to allow me to drive home! I am so sweaty and gross.

The only thing that is truly inconvenient is that I I hate shopping with other people and bumming a ride seems the less annoying route to get a ride to the stores to get a dress for our gala. And the fact that I'll have to beg a ride home after the gala because I am not looking forward to the 40 minute walk home at two in the morning.

I have relatives in OK who are all safe. I think my aunt who used to live there had a safe room built and I think safe rooms are more popular and easier to build, but they don't hold a lot of people. And you have to have the money and space to do it.

I am sorry Juliebird, but I guess it could have been worse. This verdict seems a little like death by paper cats.

Does anyone else get earwormed from rhythms of things? I have Joni Mitchell's song "Ray's Dad's Cadillac" (which I hate, incidentally)stuck in my head, and I couldn't figure out why. Then I realized that someone called the fluffy bird I linked to above the Kwisatz Haderach, and the rhythm of that is the same as Ray's Dad's Cadillac in my head. So now I am stuck with this annoying song!

Now that the shopping bug has hit, Jilli, what was the name of that online store you linked to a while back that had great coats and stuff?