So, last Thursday was my birthday, and I spent most of the day in Indianastan, working on a company newsletter. At 4:30, my friend who owns the company calls and says, "Hey, I heard there is a storm coming, if you want to leave now, it's OK."

So, I took off, and it was raining a little bit, and EVERY FREAKING ROAD was already closed. Detours everywhere. The roads could NOT have been more screwed up if Hitler and five billion Martians armed with pitchforks and plastic whistles had arrived.

(The next day, I heard they had evacuated an entire hospital in the town of Dyer. I hope nobody was in the middle of a quadruple bypass!)

So, I'm trying to go west, into Illinois, but because the roads are all messed up, I keep having to go north, which was probably the wrong thing to do because you eventually end up in Lake Michigan that way (where there is even MORE water, albeit a helluva lot more polluted and less drinkable) but I finally found a weird sort of diagonal road that went into Illinois and I was able to go in the more or less right direction after that.

Until I got to Peotone, at which time I decided to stop at a grocery store and get something for dinner. But when I went in the store, all the employees were herding everyone into the meat freezer and saying, "There's a tornado coming, everyone get in here!" No one ever bothered to explain why the meat freezer is preferable to any other part of the store; maybe because there's plenty of awful and disgusting frozen meat there to eat, or maybe it's just that it's so cold back there that being whooshed 1000 feet into the air by a rampant tornado wouldn't seem so bad by comparison.

Of course, there was no tornado (there never is -- clearly, they do not exist, and are figments of some Hollywood hack writer's imagination, like werewolves and Oxy-Clean), and we all escaped from the meat freezer after about 10 minutes.

By now it was raining pretty hard and, to make the day complete, the power was out when I got home.

Happy birthday, heh.

Of course, the power was fine three blocks away, and everyone on that side of town was plainly visible in their front windows enjoying a hearty Thanksgiving dinner.

So I drove to Wal-Mart, which also had power, and bought flashlights and batteries. The truth is, I already had a flashlight and batteries, but couldn't find them because it was too dark.

Power came back on at 1:39 in the morning, and went off again about an hour later.

The next day, I ran into several roads that were underwater. There was actually a whale frolicking at the intersection of Rte. 45 and 52. This alarmed me until I saw a dozen men in rain slickers holding harpoons.

Some birthday. I think I will skip them from here on out. Is this God's way of punishing me for buying Wal-Mart flashlights?

yay Lex is back

Sounds like a confusing day LOL

Oh no they attacked the whale poor whale LOL

Did you enjoy anything at least? A birthday cake or a card?

Good to see you Lex, sorry your birthday was so crappy, but at least it will be a "memorable one" right???? Heck, how many people can say they had floods, "almost tornados" and were almost swallowed by a whale in an intersection on their way home from work on their birthday?????? At least you didn't run into Noah and the Ark did you???

Have missed having you around guy.

lex that sounds like one really nice birthday, have had a couple of them in the past almost as much fun. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

wow lex i want some of whatever it is you were havin. i havent had an adventure like that in ages!

welcome back lexmiester.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Awwwwwwwwwwwww Lex welcome back you have been so missed