it's raining, it's pouring

The metro area just got spanked by a cranky mass of thunderstorms, winds up to 70 mph, and hail the size of golf balls, with some possible tornadoes lurking around for good measure.

I ran outside when the brunt of the storm was on us here in Wayzata (ha, yes, I'm pretty dumb), and was kind of afraid that the stop sign on the corner was going to be whipped right out of its spot and come flying toward me. Instead of going back inside and into the basement like any sane person would do, I got in my car so I could stay outside and watch it without having all the dust blown into my eyes. Not only did I see some green scary-looking clouds and insane amounts of debris in the air, I saw about 13 people flagrantly breaking the law by blowing through the stop sign right by my house! After that, I fled to the basement where I alternated between WCCO and CNN - which was actually covering the storm, to some extent. Of course it wasn't as big a deal as Hurricane Rita, understandably.

Last week's brief trip to Arkansas was pretty exhausting. My step-dad and I woke up at 5 on Thursday morning to drive down there, and once we arrived (around 7 pm), we moved furniture in and out of a U-Haul. We did the same the next day. All for these rental houses my parents have there. Then we got back in the car around 5 pm on Friday and headed back home.

Anyway, being in Arkansas was sort of like being in another world. Though we were in the northern part of the state, it was really pretty rural. Everyone had a drawl, everything was fried, stores and restaurants closed up around 7 (except the Wal-Mart Supercenter, of course), and everybody and their brother drove a truck, many of them with the Confederate flag slapped on the back. It's the South! It was a little weird being there; I kind of felt like people knew I was a foreigner, even without opening my mouth. That I was a - gasp - Yankee! Okay, I keed, it really wasn't bad, and the people I actually talked to in the brief time we were there were nothing but very friendly and welcoming. Even the woman who didn't even realize Minnesota was a state.