The Beauty and the Mess

Today is the first anniversary of the storm that tore Memphis apart, otherwise known as Hurricane Elvis. A year later, there are still homes being rebuilt near my apartment, and some ill-tended trees still have dead, broken branches sitting in them. I'm glad there's no rain in the forecast today. Once was enough!

My office building is undergoing a massive renovation. It will continue till September. Because of all the dust and who-knows-what stirred up by it, the sinus problems I was having during Emily's wedding week (a month ago) still haven't gone away. In fact, they're getting worse. My eyes hurt every day now and some mornings I can barely get my contacts in. I've started taking Allegra just to make it through the workday. I'm not the only one having problems, either, but what can you do? Oh, and I got an e-mail yesterday saying they're temporarily closing the front entrance to my building. The back entrance (which I just started using) will become the main entrance, and they're going to station the Name Badge Gestapo there. WHY?!?!? Am I going to have to start parking at Building B and walking over just to get into my office in peace? The humanity.

( 10 things survey )

WE HAVE POWER!

Wehavepowerwehavepowerwehavepowerwehavepower!!!

And now on the tenth day there is much rejoicing. My stuff is still at my parents', so I have to go there after work and collect everything. But I get to spend the night in my own bed! I get to be with my cat in my own home! I can choose clothes from my closet instead of from a duffel bag! I can upload those storm damage photos! The simple pleasures of life. :) But I'm kind of sad to leave Bun. He was acting weird this morning and I'm worried about him.

I tried to record something last night for jessecho's fun Voices of LJ project, but the microphone didn't work. I did get to hear some of the submissions, though, and they were very funny.

I meant to say this yesterday - I am happy to welcome lajea to the friends list. I've seen her around for a year or so and always thought she seemed cool. :)

I heart electricity.

A POLE TRUCK WAS AT MY APARTMENT!

I drove past the apartment on the way to Wednesday lunch, and lo and behold, there it was in all its electrical glory. Kathy called me right as I arrived at lunch- she couldn't even wait to get there to tell me. "Did you see the pole truck?!?" It had to be for our pole, since there are no other poles down in the complex. I know there are other things they have to do after the pole is up, so we are fairly confident we'll have our power back by tomorrow!!! :D I'm all aglow. Being in my own home will be wonderful. Also, Kathy's mom has offered to help us with our groceries, since she knows it'll be a financial stress for us to start over with an empty refrigerator. Isn't that nice?

Ironically, another storm came through last night (I slept through it, apparently) and knocked power out again for 7,000 people. If I were one of those people, I would probably want to kill someone.

Assuming I have Bible study tonight, I'm going to spend the time between work and study hanging out at the main library. I always get excited about going to the library, even when I already have three books at home that need to be read. I am the world's biggest nerd.

I'm getting more and more congested each day, so my dad gave me an Allegra this morning. Woo hoo! I think I like it better than Claritin. Claritin gives me nightmares. :P

You'd think I had something more interesting to say, but really, I don't.

Hey. Here's some news. My counterpart co-worker/friend has to have surgery tomorrow morning, and she'll be out for four to six weeks. (Please pray for her if you think of it.) So starting tomorrow until whenever, I'm basically going to have a double workload. I don't think it'll be too bad, but I'm not familiar with her specific projects and it might take me a while to get in the loop. So don't be surprised if you don't hear from me as much in the days to come.

Here are some random things I wanted to discuss today. I'll even put them in a list format.

1) Calling
My brother and sister got home from the weeklong Nazarene Youth Conference last night. They had a blast. My brother seems to have grown a lot spiritually, which makes me very happy. :) I think they talked about calling at the conference, because he now feels God is calling him to be a musician. He and his church friends have planned to start a band for a while, and now they're motivated to actually do it. Anyway, this started me thinking about the concept of "calling" in general. Some people believe everyone has a specific calling; others think only certain professions, like preaching, are based on a calling, and the rest of us are free to float around. I'm not sure what I think. God has a plan for each of us, but I don't think I've been called to any specific career. If I was, I'd be doing it. :P What do you guys think? What have you learned about this? Please share. I'm interested.

2) Girl Power
As I read By Design (which is completely awesome), I'm becoming more attuned to women's issues and spirituality. At the bookstore the other night I saw a book about Wicca entitled "Teen Witch" that had a lot of pretty, tough-looking witches on the cover. Over the past few years, being a witch/Slayer/Charlie's Angel/whatever has become a very cool thing in secular society, and I figured out why. Girls gravitate toward that stuff because they want power. And I'll admit, I'd like to be a butt-kicking fighter of evil myself. :) But I think they go to that and not to Christianity because Christianity isn't powerful by the world's definition. Admitting that you're helpless without Christ? Relying completely on Someone else for your security and worth? It's not very cool. I think we need to show girls/women how much power they truly have in Jesus. I guess this ramble doesn't really have an end point, but I wanted to share anyway.

3) Electrical Power
Mine is still out. Day 8. I feel so sorry for the people who didn't have a place with air conditioning to flee to, especially you, Robin. People are getting really angry. I'm thankful that my parents took me in. I miss my apartment, though.

4) Tuesday Is A Bad Day
We had another storm this morning, one week later. It wasn't too severe, but the clouds were black and it looked very scary and familiar. Kathy called me while driving and asked me to check on the weather because the cloud was freaking her out. We're all paranoid now. Unexpected 100-mph winds will do that to you.

The end.

Day 7 without power. I am a refugee, living at my parents' house. Our apartment complex is officially last on MLGW's list. If we have power by next weekend, I'll be pleasantly surprised. In the meantime, it's not bad being back home for a few days. I get to spend time with Bun and do Pilates on a carpeted floor (I had almost come to believe the back pain was necessary to do it right). And I have a lot of free time because I don't have to clean constantly.

We actually did spend Friday night at the apartment. Kathy, MaryElaine, Evan, and I had dinner at McAlister's, hung out at the bookstore for a couple of hours, and then went to Perkins for pie. Chris met us there. Then we all went back to the apartment, because a hot, dark apartment is a novelty to those who never lost power in the first place. :P When they finally went home, it was 12:30 and too late to go back to the homestead. So we stayed. I slept on top of my bed. On Saturday I awoke at 8:30 to the sound of chainsaws. By 11:00, it was unbearably hot and Kathy and I agreed we had had enough. We packed our stuff and the cat and got out of Dodge. Gandalf was especially happy about this decision, since he had been in the heat since the storm. He spent the whole afternoon at Kathy's parents' purring and rolling around happily.

Yesterday I overslept, which I hate. I awoke suddenly at 10:30. Somehow I made it to church only a little late for the 10:55 service, but my head didn't really de-fog until church was over. In the afternoon I went to the mall with my mom, which is usually a mistake because I end up feeling down on myself. It's hard to find things that make me look good. Also, Kathy and I had watched How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days the previous night, so I was already thinking about how sophisticated all those women looked and how style-less I am in comparison. Anyway, I found a shirt that I thought would be great for my birthday/seeing Clay outfit. My mom took me to look at jewelry to see if we could find something that matched. While we were there, a random lady approached me.

Lady: May I ask how old you are?
Me: I'm twenty-three.
Lady: Oh. Well, my daughter is fourteen. I thought you were about her age, so I was going to see what you thought of this bracelet. (Holds up bracelet)
Me: Um. It's nice.
My mom, to lady: She gets that a lot.
Lady: Okay. Thank you. (walks away)

Granted, I was wearing an Old Navy tank top and flip-flops, but still. Fourteen. Give me a break. I tried on the shirt, and of course, it made me look ridiculous. I am beginning to despair of finding a cute Seeing Clay outfit that I can afford. Anything that looks cute on the hanger becomes ridiculous as soon as it is on my body.

Chris and Ryan wanted me to go with them last night to see Ryan's roommate's band, but I didn't want to chance a repeat of the Mud Island concert debacle. So I stayed at home with my parents and watched the Food Network. They were featuring Miami in all of their shows. It was neat. That's all I have to say right now.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SHANA! I hope you have a great birthday, and I pray for many blessings for you in the coming year! :) A card is on its way to you.

Day 4 without power at the apartment. I spent last night at my parents'. Evan came over for a while, and we had a nice time despite the power repeatedly going out again and then coming back on. My dad said they were resetting the electrical grids. It was very disorienting- it finally came back on for good at about 2 am, and I woke up wondering why I was suddenly cold and why there were lights on. Kathy, who stayed at her parents', checked up on Gandalf this morning. One of us may have to take him if we stay out again tonight; I'm worried about leaving him for so long in the heat.

I've been constantly starving ever since this thing started. I guess the heat is making me hungry. I'll have to forage for food again at lunchtime, since only a few places are open. Yesterday I spent half an hour in the Back Yard Burgers drive-thru.

Okay, I'm sure you guys are sick of hearing about all this. Let's talk about something else. Ummm...I'm a few chapters into Desiring God. It's good, but I'm having a hard time focusing on it, so I started By Design and am finding that a lot more interesting. I don't know why the more meaty books are so hard for me to get into. If I were a Good Presbyterian, I'd have, like, the entire works of Calvin memorized by now. As it is, C.S. Lewis is the only theologian I can consistently read without getting bored. Oh, and R.C. Sproul. And whoever wrote that Esther book - Swindoll? Kathy agrees with me and says it's easier to read books that tell some sort of story, rather than expound on something. Lewis, especially, has a way of making everything seem like an interesting story. What do you guys think?

I have decided that Weezer's blue album is one of the greatest albums ever made. I never get tired of it.

Okay, I'm audi.

Where is everyone? I'm lonely.

I keep calling the apartment because if the answering machine picks up, it means our power is back on. So far, nothing. Ironically, the air conditioning unit in my office appears to have died, too. It's getting stuffy and hot in here. You know, we people are so spoiled. Take away our electricity for three days and we all freak out.

I am proud, though, of the way our city has pulled together. Last I heard, 75% of our streetlights are still out, but everyone's got the four-way-stop thing down. Electricians and emergency workers are coming in from all over the state to help. Neighbors are pitching in to clean up the trees. It's nice. I've talked to all kinds of people over the last few days. It's funny how, in a crisis situation, it suddenly becomes okay to talk to and be friendly with strangers. On a normal day, people just look at you strangely.

I made another poll, but it didn't work. Again. I am irritated that, now that I'm finally thinking of poll topics, I can't get it to work.

Well, the power has been restored at my office, so I'm back at work today. I'm glad, because I was getting tired of sitting around in a hot, quiet apartment. Staying home is fun when you have electricity, but not fun when you don't.

Kathy and I, and Kathy's dad with his chainsaw, cleared one side of our driveway yesterday so we could get out of the complex. We told him he was like Moses, letting his people go. :) It took much less time than I had anticipated, but I'm still covered in scrapes and mosquito bites. It was a good thing we did it ourselves, because all the other piles of debris are still sitting there. Every time we drove through the cleared space yesterday, we were like, "Wow, who did this? That was so nice of them! They ought to get a discount on their rent!"

On our way out to Bartlett to our parents' homes yesterday, we got our first real tour of the destruction. Galloway Golf Course, where I like to walk, is a depressing sight. Almost every other big tree is snapped or uprooted. "It's a sad day for the Ents," said Kathy. As we headed east, things looked better. My parents had been going on and on about how bad the damage was in their neighborhood, but we quickly saw that they had no idea what "bad" meant. One house was badly damaged, with half the roof gone and the windows blown out, but other than that it was just a few shingles missing. Compared to the mass killing of the old trees, it was nothing.

I took pictures of our neighborhood right after the storm, but I can't upload them until our power comes back. (It may be a while, since one of the lines is trapped under a huge fallen tree.) In the meantime, the Commercial Appeal website has some incredible photos and good articles about the storm. I'm going to go to the break room and get more ice now. Because I can. :)

At 6:45 am yesterday, everything was fine in Memphis. At 7:15 am, the city was a total disaster area.

Here's what happened. Kathy and I woke up yesterday with queasy stomachs. At 6:30, we started doing Pilates as usual. We were halfway through the video when we decided to stop because we felt so bad. Also, it was awfully dark and stormy-looking outside and we thought we ought to check on it. We turned on Channel 5 and saw that there was a big storm on its way across the river. But that was all it was- a thunderstorm. We weren't too worried.

A few minutes later, the station went to the High 5 camera on top of the building, overlooking Union Avenue. You could see the storm coming down Union- a solid wall of wind and rain. A transformer exploded. Everything on Union went dark. The storm reached the camera, everything was white, and then the station (one of the highest-wattage stations in the country) went dead. We looked outside. It was completely dark. The power went out. We noticed that Gandalf, who had been acting comfortingly fine before, was now hiding under Kathy's bed. Shana and Lawson know what that means. :P

Everything started happening very fast. The wind was blowing like crazy. We sprang into action. Kathy had to haul Gandalf out from under the bed by his tail. We ran into the stairwell- and the front door to the building was open. I quickly shut it, and two seconds later, we heard the loudest, scariest crash I have ever heard in my life. I started panicking. I banged on my neighbor, Amy's, door. After a few seconds, she came to let us in- and there was a tree in her living room. Glass was everywhere. We ran into the hallway and barricaded ourselves there. We knew the storm was only supposed to last fifteen minutes, so after that time had passed, we felt okay venturing out. The tree had broken Amy's living room and bedroom windows. We were afraid to go upstairs since we didn't know what we would find. "We have renter's insurance," I told Kathy. "Good job," she said.

Finally we went back upstairs and found our apartment completely undamaged, except for a window screen that blew off. Our cars, also, were okay. It was a miracle. The balcony-type railing over the porch was laying in the courtyard along with tree branches and large quantities of someone's roof. After calling everyone and making sure everyone was okay, we went back out to survey the damage. It was unbelievable, like the aftermath of a hurricane. For instance, a 200-year-old oak was completely uprooted next to our complex and had partially fallen on someone's house.

So we've been at home ever since, without power, but now I'm with Kathy at the university because they're basically the only place in town with electricity. My work is closed for the second day in a row because they haven't gotten their power back either. It might be out through the end of the week. Everyone is comparing this damage to the ice storm of 1994, but I think it's worse. I've never seen anything like this. It happened so fast and there was no warning. They still haven't figured out whether it was a tornado, or straightline winds, or what.

But we're okay and our families are okay, and I am very, very thankful to God for protecting us, because His hand was on us the whole time. I haven't heard from some of you other Memphis people, though. Kerry? Robin? Helen? Melissa? Everybody okay?