Category Archives: storms

Well, that was fun

So last night was, theoretically, August Game Night at our place. The storms sort of caused some issues with that, though. The biggest problem was that first Metra shut down all service between 3 and 4 PM, then slowly brought things back online. takaza was supposed to catch his regular train at 5:11 PM, but it was delayed by 30 minutes…then it wasn’t moving at all due to a power line across the tracks in Des Plaines, which stopped all service on the North Central Line. His train didn’t actually get moving until sometime after 7 PM and he got home at around 8 PM, two hours later than usual (there’s more to the story, but I’ll let him post about that).

Unfortunately, because of the weather pretty much everyone but steviemaxwell had to cancel, and it’s certainly understandable. We had fun anyway, though. Stevie and I got to chat for a while, then when Dan texted to let me know he was on his train heading northbound we drove down to Jimmy John’s and picked up some subs. The rest of the evening was spent chatting, watching Robot Chicken, and playing poker, where I learned that Omaha is a pretty fun game, and I accidentally won all the chips 🙂

The good news is that all the trains are running as they should today, at least up our way. We were spared the worst of it, with the hardest hit areas being between us and Chicago. 250,000 people are still without power, though we never had any problems there. But hey, there’s more storms on their way today, so who knows what the day will hold. The good news is that we’re on relatively high ground and far away from any large water source, so flooding isn’t an issue near us. It might make getting around interesting for the next few days, though!

Grump

Ugh. Strong storms last night. The power went out at around 11:45 PM. We didn’t get to sleep until sometimes after 12:30 AM.

At 2:20 AM, the weather radio shrieked an alarm, scaring the bejesus out of takaza and me. I was halfway to getting dressed to head to the basement before they announced that it was a flash flood warning, not much concern for us as we’re on a hill. It took me a good half-hour to get back to sleep.

Even with the power off, our clock radio does its darndest to have the alarm go off. Unfortunately, the backup battery doesn’t do so well at keeping time, so the 6 AM alarm went off at 5:07 AM. I never got back to sleep after that.

When I left the house at 6:50 AM, the power was still off. At this point I have to assume that everything in the fridge is pretty much a loss. Hmm, checking the ComEd automated system, the estimated time of repair is 6 PM tonight. Well, so much for everything in the freezer. Bah.

As we left the house, I noticed a couple of news helicopters just a ways off to the west. Poking around the news websites a bit, it looks like they were looking at the lumber store in downtown Round Lake (Cedar Lake Rd. & Route 134) whose roof was peeled off and tossed across the Metra tracks. Thank heavens it was nothing worse than that.

So now we get to play “How Can Duncan Make It Through The Day On Four Hours Of Sleep?” My preliminary answer is “not well”, but we’ll see how things go.

That Was a Weekend?

Sometimes a weekend is so low-key you hardly know it’s there until Monday whacks you upside the head with a two-by-four.

We had a nice, relaxing “cat weekend”, something that I promised takaza we’d try to have at least once a month. I’m a go-go-go social butterfly kind of guy, but he needs a weekend to recharge his batteries every so often (and I suppose it doesn’t do me any harm either). Dan got to sleep in late both Saturday and Sunday, and we even stayed up far too late on Saturday night (yes, I can stay up later than midnight! So there!).

On Friday we relaxed a bit after work then thought about going out for dinner. We started to leave but looking at the radar and the approaching storm front elected to delay our departure by a half-hour. It’s a good thing, too, because a fast-moving storm blew through with torrential rain and 40 mph+ wind gusts. The sky was amazing right after the front went through; Dan took a couple of pictures and e-mailed them off to the local CBS affiliate, who posted both of them to their website! For dinner, Dan wanted to try the Popeye’s Restaurant, just because it was something he hadn’t had before. One underwhelming meal later, we knew why he hadn’t had it before. We won’t be returning. After dinner, we decided to stop by the Round Lake Streets of Summer Festival. The rainstorm had taken its toll, and the actual festival attendees were outnumbered by the festival staff and security. It was really pretty sad. We walked through the festival grounds and listened to the increasingly-awful band playing (more volume does not mean better music!) and decided to leave.

On Saturday we had to take my car in to the dealership to have some upholstery checked for a possible warranty repair. That’s a whole other rant, though. Afterwards we got a tasty late lunch/early dinner at Scott Dogs. We bummed around the house for a bit, then snuggled up on the sofa and watched Spellbound. I had meant to see this years ago, and I am pleased to report it is every bit as engaging and entertaining as I had heard. What a great movie! Afterwards, we stayed up far too late watching Flip This House.

Sunday we pretty much just bummed around the house before heading out to the week’s grocery shopping. Dan made a big pot of a very tasty chicken/rice/chorizo stew which we had for dinner and we’ll both be having for lunch for the next few days, then we watched some TiVo before going to bed.

Excitement city, eh? But it was a very enjoyable weekend nonetheless. Oh, and obviously we never did get out to see Waitress. Hopefully it’ll still be around next weekend.