I was puttering around the house Saturday morning when the phone rang; it was my mother, wanting to make sure I was safe. "Why wouldn't I be?" I asked. "Well, your brother said there'd been a tornado in Omaha," she replied. Thinking that she'd gotten confused and believed the ones that had hit a few weeks ago were more recent, I told her that I'd left Omaha Friday and as far as I knew everything was fine.

When I got done calming her down, though, something told me to hit the computer. And sure enough, no more than two hours after I'd left, Omaha got hammered by a nasty storm and winds up to 130 mph. Whoa. And the reports were that power was out all over the city and in some cases wouldn't be restored until the following weekend.

Well, having watched Red and Darling Daughter endure that more than a few times last year, I decided to make a call or two before heading back. The manager of my apartment complex told me that they did have power as of Saturday. That meant it'd been out for at least twelve hours prior. So much for the contents of my fridge; fortunately, there wasn't that much in there at the moment.

I got back here about eleven last night, and there were pockets of blacked-out homes here and there down Dodge, as well as a number of bashed-up signs and downed tree limbs. Seeing as I work in a glass building, I'm wondering what I'll find here shortly when I head into work.

But you know, I'm glad I wasn't around. I dislike storms to begin with; this one would have really freaked me out.

JSM