Dodged Another Bullet

We woke up to tornado warnings on our telephones yesterday and turned on the news to see that we were in the path of a suspected tornado that was heading right at us. Since we live in a mobile home that has been added to on all four sides, the safest place for us is a small laundry room in the center of one of the additions. We closed all the interior doors leading into that room and were ready to step into it at any moment, but after about 15 minutes the all-clear sounded.

The strange thing was that we never got a drop of rain until after the storm had moved out to sea, and then we got a brief shower, but nothing severe like the weatherman had predicted the night before. We got a little more rain later in the afternoon and evening. It wasn’t much, but our lawn and citrus trees really needed it.

Sometime while all of this was going on, FedEx delivered a package of new Wrangler jeans, leaving them on the ramp at the door of our house. This always irritates me because we live on a corner lot and our address is actually on the side street, where there is a carport. Most delivery people, including FedEx, leave our packages there. But every so often somebody leaves them at the other door, open to the rain and easy for any porch pirate driving by to grab. So far that hasn’t happened, but we know other people who have had packages go missing in our neighborhood.

With the bad weather event behind us, I spent some time making the corrections to several chapters of my new book that Terry had edited and proofread, then printed out three more chapters for her to go over. When I get this close to the end of a book it’s kind of like a snowball rolling downhill, gathering momentum as it goes. I’ll be keeping my proofreaders busy for the next week or so.

A few days ago, in a blog post entitled A Perfect Day, I told you about spending the day fishing on our pontoon boat. In that blog, I included a picture of my sunburned face. I have only myself to blame for that because Miss Terry handed me a tube of SPF 50 marine sunscreen when we got out on the water and I didn’t bother to put it on. You would think after having already lost a chunk of one ear to skin cancer that I would be smarter than that, but obviously, I’m not. Trust me, I’m paying for that foolishness now.

I’m using lots of aloe gel and vitamin E oil, and though it looks terrible, it’s not hurting as bad as it was a couple of days ago. Lesson learned, always listen to Miss Terry. We hope to get out on the water again this weekend, but trust me, I will take precautions to keep this from happening again.

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.

Be sure to enter our latest Free Drawing. This week’s prize is an autographed copy of my book Overlooked Arizona: Over 35 Arizona Great Arizona Destinations You Shouldn’t Miss!

To enter, click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with US addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.

Thought For The Day – Here I am, running at the mouth again!  It’s the only running I do these days!