Jan 29, 2008

High winds and holding back the hot air

Tuesday began with a trip about 2.5 hours up the road for a meeting and Interactive Adventures overview (that is, virtual field trips/interactive lessons via interactive video). The 9:00am start time meant that I had to leave the house at 6:30 Tuesday morning. The main obstacle I faced during the trip were the ever-increasing winds with a ton of rain. At times, traffic was on a 70-mph Interstate only traveling at about 45-50 mph. As the day wore on, the winds increased to the point that trees fell, power poles fell, and general mayhem ensued. At the time of this post, there are about 80,000 people without power around various parts of the state. During our meeting, the power went out and had not come back on before we called it quits.

The drive home did not have the rain, but the winds blew much harder. 18-wheelers were being blown from lane to lane, as were just about every other vehicle on the road. Crossing the Arkansas River was the worst. Winds coming across the river would divide above and below the bridge, creating all kinds of weird 'wind tunnel' driving conditions.

Shan's Dad has been fighting downed trees all over our county. It turns out, the weather folks are calling for snow/sleet for most of Arkansas on Thursday night/Friday morning. Basically, a big mess.


On the way to the meeting, I made a conscious decision to keep my mouth shut as much as possible during the meeting. I know it's hard to believe, but I am usually making all kinds of smart remarks and adding my 2 cents as often as I can. Today, I decided to curtail that. It did not go unnoticed. By the time lunch rolled around, the people around me were asking me if I was okay, since I was "being awfully quiet." I told them I had made the decision to keep my mouth shut and let other folks have a say.

It lasted about 10 minutes after that conversation. Without getting into specifics (because I believe we are going to give the particular interactive lesson provider another chance to show they know what they're doing), the last presentation we took part in was probably one of the worst ones I have ever seen. Let's just say that it started with a history lesson and ended with a discussion of a description of a bizarre paranormal event that the presenter believed she had. Things deteriorated from there, and there were a couple of folks at the meeting that just HAD to egg it all on. After the presentation, I decided I had kept my trap shut long enough. :-)

1 comment:

  1. They are calling for the exact same weather here! how bizaare is that? And we're over a 1000 miles apart!

    Why do you have ads for carwash equipment and owning a carwash on your blog? That's strange, even for you.

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