Sandbagging pictures

I've been internetless since last week sometime, so I am sitting at a coffee shop in Coralville.
I took a break from sandbagging on Friday to put bandaids on my bleeding fingers and took these pictures.

More floods

Some of these pictures are really quite pretty. I am curious what the Coralville Dam looks like now that the water is over the spillway. I imagine it's not great.

Floods

Yep, floods.

Thunderstorms

I would think that thunderstorms are terribly exciting and fun, if it weren't for the following things:

- They are always way early in the morning when I am trying to sleep. I got woken up by stormy craziness at 4:30 this morning and never managed to go back to sleep. The storm stopped literally two minutes before my alarm went off at 6 this morning. Come on, at least be later in the day when I can enjoy it, or be at night so I can just sleep in later to make up for lost sleep.

- There is a very real chance that any of these storms can turn into a tornado. I moved here a few months after a tornado tore half the city apart two years ago, and I saw how damaged all the buildings and houses were. That's just scary. It doesn't help to have a weather radio going off like crazy announcing "tornado watch in effect for the next 4 hours!" or whatever. I don't think I would freak out so much if it was just like, "Emily, there's a tornado about to hit your house, go to the basement now."

- I actually own my home. That means when stuff breaks, I have to fix it, and pay for it, which sucks. I've already gotten a rip in a window screen, chips in the tile on the table and two broken planters from storms. We've taken steps to try to prevent more outdoor furniture casualties, but I suspect we haven't seen the end of the destruction.

- Lightning's gotta strike somewhere. Last year, it hit my friend's house and like, blew up their tv. I like my tv. It has shows like House and The Office and Ace of Cakes. I don't want it to be blown up. I don't want anything else to be blown up by lightning either.

Storms can be pretty and exciting, but mostly they are loud and scary and make floods that make it hard to get to work, and I don't like them.

I guess, though, that it's our fault for being bad to the environment. You'd think this would motivate me to do good things like riding my bike to work. I might even think about it if it weren't raining so darn hard. Augh.

Here's a picture of lightning from last summer for you.

Three posts in a day so I don't have to say anything for a long time

I got the cat a leash. Now at least when he sits at the door very loudly saying vowels ("eeeeiiiaaoooouuuuuu," says the cat) I can be like, ok, get your silly little harness on and we can go outside. I gotta tell you, though, I am not especially looking forward to picking fleas out of all of this fur insanity. Is this not the most ridiculous thing you've ever seen?


Ok, I said in the last post that the cookbook I used for the cobbler was my favoritest ever, but that's not true. It's amazing, but this one is better.

Oh yeah, I also made a cobbler and it was fantastic

Chelsea made a cobbler and I was jealous and I also had strawberries in the fridge so I whipped out my favoritest cookbook and made a cobbler. Well, I didn't have enough strawberries, but I found some frozen mixed berries in the freezer so I threw those in, too.

I think the use of the π plate helps add to the deliciousness.

Updates on things

So, while people were getting tornadoed up north aways, our outdoor furniture was blowing around and breaking stuff. We'd just gotten back from seeing Indiana Jones (!) and it was supposed to be stormy so we looked outside and literally like 2 seconds later our entire metal and tile (ie, not especially lightweight) furniture set took off from the place I am standing to take this picture and landed on the other side of the deck where the plants are.

Here's the damage:



I got another plastic bin and just set the broken one inside, but I haven't done anything about the terra cotta one with lavender in it. Shrug. I also moved the deck around so that the table is over on that side permanently and the plants and the plants are on the opposite side.

Speaking of plants, here are some pictures:






Now, here's some knitting:

These arm warmers look completely ridiculous and long and skinny on the needles, but they are totally comfy cozy when I put them on.