Weekend Plans Post: The Thunderstorm
We got a thunderstorm. It was a good one.
Granted, when I was a kid in Michigan, we had *GREAT* thunderstorms. These were the ones that would have raindrops the size of quarters and lightning that would crack across the sky and thunder that lasted a full 4 or 5 seconds as all of it caught up. It’d rattle the windows and the grownups would say stuff like “ooooh, that was a good one!” after a particularly short duration between lightning and thunder. The next day, the kids would all talk about how their dogs or cats freaked out or make Noah jokes.
The storm we just got last night? It was pretty good.
The best part of the storm happened after bedtime so the rain on the roof felt like a lullaby. Occasionally there would be a big flash of lightning dancing on the back of my eyelids and I woke up just enough to play the game where I counted…
one-one-thousand
two-one-thousand
three-one-thousand
fou
*KABOOM*
Okay. That one was less than a mile away. Back to sleep.
Then a few moments later more lightning flashing.
one-one-thousand
two-one-thousand
thr
*KABOOM*
Oooh, that was a good one. Back to sleep.
Woke up to a flashing alarm clock.
Nice.
Looking forward to the sun coming out tomorrow or the next day and seeing how lush and green everything is… and the weather sites are saying that next week will be *FULL* of thunderstorms and so that’ll be good for a month of green once everything settles down and the sun comes out again.
Let’s hope a handful of the storms are good ones (but not, you know, *TOO* good).
This weekend will be dodging rain between running around and going to Costco and Safeway and, on Sunday, going over to Mom’s for supper and Mother’s Day. Maybe we’ll even talk about some of the storms we got in Michigan way back when.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is “Lightning Across The Sky” by Craiyon.)
I admit I dislike thunderstorms. I grew up in northeast Ohio; a very early memory of mine is hearing about the tornado outbreak in 1974 that basically leveled Xenia. I also remember being rousted out of bed once or twice and having to troop down to the basement. Or, midafternoon, something coming across the radio and my mom yelling “someone grab the cat” and all of us going to the basement. Or tornado drills at school, where I realized pretty early on that being in a kneeling position with your fingers laced over where your brainstem was really wouldn’t protect you from flying debris…
And I remember in April 2020 here – right at the worst point of the pandemic – tornadoes here hitting all around me, to the point where I called my mom to say goodbye just in case (I don’t have a basement; no one here does. I was huddled in the dry bathtub under a couple of quilts)
This weekend is packing – Sunday I go up to visit my mom for a couple weeks so I need to do laundry and clean the place up a little and wind off some yarn for projects and cram it all in a suitcase.Report
Nothing puts me to sleep faster at night than the constant rumbling of a thunderstorm in the distance. My wife grew up in a “hide in the basement” family; I grew up in a “sit on the covered porch and watch the lightning show” family; this led to a certain amount of tension over the years.
The big thunderstorms stayed just east of Fort Collins this time. Close enough to get the light show at night, far enough away that we didn’t get any of the hail. There’s been two inches of rain over the last 72 hours, without the show. Most of it was spread out enough to give it time to soak in. Plenty to encourage the tinder to grow so it can dry out later in the summer.Report
Received an unpleasant 0300 wakeup call because college boy (who is home for the Summer) discovered water in the basement. It was all hands on deck and we had everything cleaned up and contained in about an hour. I now have to figure out where the water is coming from…I suspect a very old, leaky window and a window well that fills up every time we get rain like this…but it could be a portal opened up to the elemental plane of water or–even worse–seepage through the foundation.
So at a minimum, exploring window replacement options and digging out the window wells along the front of the house are on my docket, but my ace is college boy, who is a fantastic worker.Report
We started the weekend last night by going to the Music Video they call Guardians of the Galaxy 3. It was… fine. Cute at moments, but a little too self-conscious that it was more of a coda than a true GotG movie. Some threads were tied off, some were untied; but mostly it felt too much like Hollywood lamenting the financial realities of Holywood that the rollicking good fun that should dominate a Guardians movie. Lady Marchmaine in particular lamented too much pew-pew without good music (which makes the pew-pew fun in other movies) and the humor was poorly paced.
On the plus side, looking forward to the Wes Anderson Firefly reboot that they slyly snuck in in act 2.
I’ve reserved some of my dumber musical thoughts on the topic to twitter, where dumb thoughts reside.Report
I kinda want to go out and see that… but I also know that the main reason I want to see it is Rainbow’s “Since You’ve Been Gone” and it irritates me that the Guardians movies do such a good job of making me remember songs that I like a lot.Report
Tonight’s soundtrack: It Takes Two
The first version is by Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock. The first thing to notice is the voice of the kid asking to hear the single. Seriously, I giggled for a good few minutes about this:
After that is to remember Seductions cover version of the song and how alternately awful and divine it was:
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