Another one waiting to happen

I lived in Washington State on May 18, 1980. I remember getting home from kindergarted and telling my mom about how Mount St. Helens interrupted. (I don't remember saying interrupted, but I believe her word.) I lived through numerous smallish earthquakes; I think the largest I've been in was maybe around a 6, and that's probably a high estimate. I remember a tornado that landed nearby our housing in Illinois; several tornado warnings my first trip to San Angelo, another tornado hitting somewhat near our apartment during my second trip to San Angelo, and the excitement that brought. When I lived in Maryland, we got hit with a pretty good sized nor'easter. I don't know if it qualified as a blizzard, but the venerable Fox5 news out there made it sound like one. I got to experience the Yellow Rain in Korea - a wind draft carries a bunch of the Gobi Desert that is so desparate to get out of China it agrees to land on Korea, even North Korea, and covers everything with a yellow dusting of Gobi Sand. And as I mentioned above, I lived in San Angelo, so I know what hell is like, only with a Chili's.

As far as I can tell, for major natural disasters, I have to experience a Tsunami, a flood, and a hurricane to fill my natural disaster bingo card. I would count an avalanche, but that seems to be too dependent on living on a mountain high enough to have one, and I refuse to live in Colorado (no offense to all my faithful Colorado readers; I can't stand your hockey team). I've been through a lot of local flooding in my life, but I've never been involved in a batten-down-the-hatches type flood that involves massive amounts of sandbags. It looks like my hurricane spot will be checked in the next few days, though, as Rita, apparently on a mission from President Bush to get rid of the evacuess (refugees) who got out of Louisiana safe and sound and broke, bears down on this lovely city, or a short distance south of same.

I don't know if this is just the luck of the draw, or if I'm just really bad at picking places to live. All I know is that the weather doesn't seem to agree with me anywhere. Perhaps I need to find out who my enemies are and move next to them and see if my weather charm can wipe them out.

I must say I'm a little concerned about this one. I've never dealt with anything as large scale as a hurricane; and except for the San Angelo parts of my experience, I've never been the point person. However, we have our evacuation plans in place; we know where we're going, and we know what we need to bring with us. We have faith that we'll be taken care of and everything will work out all right.

But if President Bush reads this, I have one request: I'm leaving my car here. Can you see to it that your hurricane destroys it so I can get a new one with the insurance money? Thanks.