Random Updates

Long time, no post. I have been trying to do at least one post per week, but I haven't been good at keeping up with that this month. This is probably due to a lot of reasons, but mainly we haven't had much going on lately. That is, unless you consider working extra hours fun. I don't, especially when the weather has been so nice out. Also, I start teaching Summer II tomorrow, so I have been prepping for that. I am able to re-use some of my materials from the Spring semester, but not all. I've also been trying to arrange/help my grandma move into assisted living. It is not going as smoothly as hoped. So, needless to say, there hasn't been much to post about.

Todd did go to St. John's, Newfoundland for a work conference. I stayed behind for work and to take care of the dog. I am glad I don't live in Canada. He said it never really got above 50-degrees the whole time and it was usually very gray out or raining. I would go crazy. It reminds me a bit of the winters we experienced when we lived up by Cleveland. Below is a picture of Todd while out exploring the island. He saw lots of icebergs and ate a lot a fish.

Also, I am happy to report our garden did survive the flooding. We weren't sure it would since it was under about 2-feet of water. But, we cleaned it out after the water subsided and staked everything back up. So, that seemed to work. In fact, things seem to be growing well as evidenced by our broccoli below. We also have already have peppers on Todd's jalapeno plant. Crazy!

We didn't have a big celebration, but Lucy turned 3 last week. She hasn't calmed down much (when do labs ever become calm?), but she has started turning a little gray on her chin. Despite the gray, we still get asked if she is a puppy since he is so petite and high energy!

Flooding and Severe Weather

We awoke this morning to power surges, tornado sirens, and flooding. Not quite the Saturday morning I envisioned where we would sleep in and be lazy. But, thankfully we have no damage to our house or property and there are many who were not as lucky. After the tornado siren stopped, we went out to view the damage. You can see me standing in the middle of the street in front of house. Basically, a river was flowing through our side yard. There are three streets in our neighborhood and it slopes downward from the first to third street. We are on the middle street, so our house was high enough not to get any water, however several neighbors in the street at the bottom of the slope were not so lucky. But, the water was rushing right through our side yard and was at least a foot or more deep. Below is a picture of the water coming through - most of the water in the neighborhood drained this direction. You can see our washed out garden, too. Other pictures are posted here.

Other parts of the state were not as lucky. Several areas just north of us by 20 miles are devastated. We got upwards of 7 inches of rain over night and other areas around us got a lot more. All of the major highways out of Bloomington were closed and some of them even have sections washed out. Many local lakes had dams that were breached and thousands of people have evacuated their homes. It has been a week of weather as we had another day of flooding earlier this week and severe weather with tornadoes around us several different nights. Hopefully, the coming week will be a little more peaceful.