Monday, 08 June 2009

• an odd morning commute

  i just want to take a moment to describe my lovely commute into work this morning.  (and no, lori - i'm not complaining - in some ways, i found this morning to be pretty funny!)

  so this morning i got up to get ready for work, same as usual.  as i'm getting ready, i perform my daily task of checking weather.com to see how i should dress for the day.

  and we had a special weather advisory.  i looked and it was talking about a giant storm front moving through and hitting parts of st louis between 7:15 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. 

  which is great, because that's when i usually drive to work!  yippee! 

  so i quick run around and close all the windows, rush to get ready, and as i'm packing my lunch, i hear the rain start.  well, i hear the thunder.  and then the house lights flickered on and off a couple of times.  i go to our back slider to take a look, and i'm seeing our road, gulf drive, with a river of rain running down the hill and rushing into the drains almost like someone turned on a faucet!  oh yeah, and penny-sized hail bouncing around on our back porch.  looked like a happy hail dance festival, and all in time for me to run out to my car.

  so i run out of the apartment, carefully attempting to sprint across our parking lot in high heels while carrying my lunch and my coffee, which spills all over.  i manage to step directly in a giant puddle in the middle of our parking lot, which instantly flooded both of my shoes.  get into my car, start driving, and get about a mile down the road when my car decides to do something it hasn't done in about 5 months.

  the "door-open" dash light and overhead light starts flickering.  it's a good time.

  while cowering underneath trees at opportune times during my commute, i open the door and slam it shut. the light goes off, for a minute.  then it flickers on again.  i finally turn off my overhead light so it stops looking like there is lightning inside my car.  it continues to do this for the entire 6.5 mile, 40 minute commute to work.

  the 40 minute commute is a little longer than normal.  i got less than 2 miles from our apartment and had to take a detour because an intersection was flooded over.  i watched the car in front of me slowly wading through and decided my old integra was too low riding and old to take any chances there.  so i take a detour. 

  from that point, there are 3 major roads that i take, that are all 4 lane roads.  on all of these roads, both of the outer-most lanes were closed for sections due to trees that had been knocked over from the storm.  when they weren't closed, i was weaving between the two lanes to dodge downed trees and downed tree branches that made it to the inner lanes.

  talk about crazy!  i get to work, and the immediate area around my work looks like it got nothing more than a drizzle!  i found out from my co-worker later that they also got a torrential downpour, but there was much less devastation happening there than by my apartment.

  this reminds me, last week tuesday, we got some cool rain and lightning at work but it was just a little storm.  when i got home, i noticed it looked like university city was devastated with a hurricane.  kyle and i splurged on some papa johns pizza that night for dinner, and on the ride back after picking it up, we saw two trees which were planted between the sidewalk and the road that had fallen over onto houses or fences, taking up a 6 foot section of grass with each one. 

  aparently the storms like to hit where we live!  :)

  oh, and earlier on my lunch break, i decided to take my car for a test drive, and of course the door-open dash light is no longer flickering.  huh.  bizarre car.  guess i can cancel that appointment to have it looked at on wednesday.

   

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