Natural Disaster Averted

Hey all. So I was watching Spaceballs on Monday night after dinner, when it was interrupted by the Emergency Alert System. However, unlike every other time that I've seen the EAS, this was not a test. Supposedly a tornado was heading our way. Now I've played soccer during a hurricane watch, have gone to Dunkin Donuts in a blizzard, and slept through an earthquake, but a tornado was simply outside my realm of experience. Fortunately, Marie (my intrepid girlfriend), is from Texas and knows exactly what to do about these sort of things, and we left my apartment to look for low ground.

The logical place to go seemed to be the laundry room, as I guess you're supposed to get as close to the ground as possible and stay away from windows. As the laundry room is meant for doing laundry, there was precious little for us to do. After calling my mom back in NY, and being asked by my stepdad if I had ruby slippers, we learned that the tornado was actually going to go directly around us. So back inside we went. However, it continued to pour outside, preventing us from wanting to go anywhere.

When we finally did venture out of doors to head back to Marie's, we were confronted with one of the many issues that plague Hyde Park: there is absolutely no drainage anywhere. The puddle that had formed around our car was about a foot and a half deep and rising. It got to the point where I questioned whether to pay a guide to get across, or simply caulk my wagon and float it. Luckily, Marie is also the kind of person to own enormous rain boots, and was able to ford the river, retrieve the car, and drive us back.

Now the tornado didn't seem too bad, until we realized that it had knocked out a large percentage of the traffic lights between us in Hyde Park and the South Loop. I can only hope that people up there are good drivers. But all in all, it was a very successful tornado.

May all your hits be crits,
B