Wow. Weird last couple of days.

After I had a short nap this afternoon, my sister Kim called. She and Mom had gone shopping in Des Moines, and wanted to pick up dinner from Appleby's for supper. I called it in, they picked it up, and we met at Kim's to eat. I ended up having to drive out of the way to get to her house, because the utility people were fixing one of the poles that had fallen Thursday night during the storms.

Things happened so quickly Thursday night that there was never really any time to get scared, other than that brief second when I realized that we would not be able to get down to the laundry room, so we huddled in the hallway, while I prayed that the roof would hold.

When all was said and done, we were fine, had no damage or anything. However, a trailer home in the trailer park about half a mile away was just destroyed, and two others were knocked off of their foundations. No one was seriously injured, thank goodness. I didn't really even realize that there was more damage until Kim warned me that I had to go around other streets to get to her house.

My sister and her husband were out of the worst of it, except for the pole that snapped off at the base, and left them without electricity for about an hour. They really didn't even know what was going on, but learned that an hour occupying a toddler brings out the creative side of people...

In Manson, a house lost a roof. My parents were at a wake for a friend of the family, and really didn't know how bad things were until they left. My dad stayed home long enough to call us back before going out with the fire department to help. It was his birthday, and my son wanted to sing Happy Birthday, and tell him about camping. Ten minutes on the phone, and he was out of the door.

Friday, my dad did not have such a good day. There are these figure eight cars for races in their area (I know nothing about the races, just that he does a lot of alignments for the racers).

Let's just say that if you are going to make adjustments to a race car that cause it to perform in an unexpected way, and maybe the brakes aren't working right, you should probably tell your mechanic BEFORE you leave.

But that's a story for another day...