Hot

Moving in the middle of June in Arkansas = one hot day.  With the humidity, I'm sure the heat index will be over 100.  Wonderful. ha!

I'm thinking about trying to plan a little run for Sunday morning.  If I get up at the crack of dawn, it might be below 80.  heh.

On another random note, we bought our fridge last night!  YAY!  We got the one we wanted and I had a 10% off coupon, which saved us some cash.  :-)  It will be delivered on Monday afternoon!

Flooding...

I promise to upload the 5k pictures tonight.  We had a house showing last night and I didn't get a chance.  Plus, I'm sick with a cold.  Boooo!  So when we got home last night, I took some meds and went to bed at 8pm!

The picture above is of a bean field on my way to work.  As you can tell, it's a lake right now.  The water is getting closer and closer to the interstate, but thank the Lord, the raining has stopped!  There has been flooding in a lot of areas surronding us and they've even had to close part of a major insterstate down.

Also, my sister's scan came back normal!  Thank you for the prayers!  Now they're sending her to yet another doctor.  I might share more later.

Happy Tuesday!

Prayers Needed

Thanks for the prayers sent out for Vilonia yesterday.  We had another round of storms last night, but luckily we didn't have any more tornadoes near by.

I have yet another request from ya'll.  My sister (who is 19) is having some health issues that are kind of scary right now.  If you could, keep her in your prayers.  I don't want to share too much, but she has a scan on Friday that will tell us what we need.  Please pray for good results.

Thanks.  I hope ya'll are having a great, stress free week!

Thankful

Tornadoes ripped through Central Arkansas last night.  The town of Vilonia is devastated.  I was in Vilonia last night, because my parents thought it would be safer to be in Vilonia than in Conway last night.  The storm went through West Conway, but then another popped up in Vilonia.  Luckily, where we were at was about 3 miles away from the damage.

My granddad and aunt's house was much, much closer.  So close that they have HUGE trees down - roots and all.  So close that two mobile homes across the road from them were wiped completely out.

This morning my husband and dad are helping my granddad with the giant tree.  They'll be taking saws and cutting it up, to move off of his fence (and repair the fence) so that his livestock doesn't escape - if they haven't already.

We are all very thankful that our family and friends are okay.  It was a very, very close call and they're calling for more storms and possibility of tornadoes tonight as well.

I'm hoping to take off of work at 11am today to go help with clean up at Vilonia.  The town was hit very hard and that's where my family lives.  Where my sister and brothers graduated from high school - which was hit by the way. 

The Roof Is On Fire

Or not.

My hair was in all it's straightened glory this morning.  Straightening serum, flat iron, and humidity spray... then this happened...

The fire alarm went off at work this morning.  A total of 6 fire trucks came and we all waited outside for about 30 minutes.  We had MAJOR storms come through last night, so that left a lot of moisture in the air.  Thus, my hair decided to rebel and become a giant poof ball.  I wish I had those 15 minutes I spent straightening it back...

Pictures!

We got a total of somewhere around 7 inches the last few days.  The hubs and I drove around town both Wednesday and Thursday night.  We liked seeing what all was closed and how the roads were.  Truth be known, we just wanted to see how slick things were.  We also drove out to my grandad's in Vilonia yesterday evening and rode 4 wheelers out there with my sister and dad!  We had a blast!! 

The snow will be melting soon today and I'm glad to see it go.  I'm ready for the warmer temps this next week brings and I'm ready to drive!  Hubs has been doing all of the driving and I'm ready to get behind the wheel and buy a new pair of running shoes!  Yes, tomorrow I'll be breaking in a new pair of shoes at my 5k.  But, I really don't have much of a choice.  Wish me luck!  I'll be sucking wind the whole time!  ha!

3 Things Thursday

1. Yes, today is weigh-in day.  I weighed in at 143.  So, I've gained a pound back.  I'd like to thank Super Bowl Sunday and 6.5 inches of snow for that.  Argh.
2. I'm working from home again today due to said snow.  I really don't mind though.  Why?  I guess I'm just learning to deal with it.  I'll more than likely going to be here again tomorrow, too.  (btw, I have some snow pictures to upload, maybe we'll see those tomorrow.)
3. My first 5k of 2011 is Saturday.  Um, I've ran 3 miles since November.  And with 6.5 inches of snow on the ground, I can't run outside nor drive to the gym.  Such is life.  I'm hoping to get out tomorrow evening to get a new pair of running shoes.  Then, at least my knee wont be hurting due to old shoes.

Thank You Old Man Winter

Dear Old Man Winter,

I want to say Thank You for coming through for me.  You've cancelled class for me tonight and I couldn't be happier.  I'll deal with working from home today, because I'm so excited that I don't have to go to school.  Plus, this is suppose to be the most snow we've gotten in YEARS.  It looks beautiful and you didn't let me down.  We're now officially BFFs.  Let me know what color string you'd like your bracelet to be. 

xoxo, Shannon

On a different note, we had an exciting time in the neighborhood yesterday afternoon.  Two cop cars, cops on their speakers telling some guy to put both hands out the window of his car, cop cars blocking his car so he couldn't escape, towing the guy's car away after searching it, and the guy leaving in the back of the cop car 45 minutes later.  Don't worry, I got a picture with my phone (while standing in my doorway).  And no, the guy didn't live in our neighborhood....

A Letter To Old Man Winter

Dear Old Man Winter,

They're calling for 5-8 inches of snow here in good ole Arkansas for tomorrow.  Can you please come through with that?  Yes, I know I've been asking for Spring here lately, but I have class tomorrow night and frankly, I don't want to go.  So, if you could snow enough (or more) to close UCA tomorrow night, then I'll be your BFF.  And while we're being frank, you and I both know you don't have any BFF's in Arkansas right now.  Just sayin'.

xoxo, Shannon

P.S.  Yes, I realize I'll still have to work (from home) and we both know how much I hate that.  But, I really don't want to do my homework.

Not Really Wordless Wednesday

• This is what our desk looked like last week when I was working from home. 
• They're calling for snow/ice tomorrow and I'm hoping that they're wrong.  I do not want to work from home again this week.
• Tonight, I start my Organizational Behavior class.  I'm only take one class this semester and after looking at the syllabus, I'm very thankful for that!!  This one will be a LOT of work!
• They're bringing in Papa John's pizza for lunch today as a "Thank You" for working so much overtime.  We're still on overtime, but atleast they've cut back for the time being to one hour per day instead of two.  I'm very thankful for that!

Half Marathon Weather

So, we've all done this, right?  It's the week of your {insert race here} and you start checking the weather forecast every single hour on the hour to see if it's changed.  I know I'm not alone here....

This Saturday's forecast has changed a little bit, but not to my delight.  This was the forecast as of Wednesday. 

Let's see.  It's October - almost November - and yet the high will be 80 with a low of 64?!  Hello?!  Last year when I did this race it was 40something degrees when we started!  Don't even get me started on the 40% chance of rain!  Pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, I have enough going against me for this race - let's not add the weather to that list! 

Dear running & weather gods,
Please, let's drop the temperature by about 10 degrees, make the humidity go away, and move the rain off by a few hours.  Also, let me run with ease like a gazelle.  That's not too much to ask, right?
With Love {and some hate},
Me

Tornadoes

As I'm sure you've all heard, Arkansas and other southern states had some horrible weather this past weekend. Tornadoes ripped through states on Friday night and then threatened us again on Saturday evening. The above picture was taken in Scotland, Arkansas. I've been to Scotland many, many times. It's about a 15-20 minute drive from my mother's house in the sticks. Just a year or so ago, this same county was torn apart by tornadoes. It's a sad, sad thing to see.

I called my mother to make sure she was okay. She said that she was. The tornadoes had just missed her. She said she could hear the roar and her dog went crazy, but her home and everything was left untouched. Thank God.




This picture was taken by a friend. It's the funnel cloud we saw Saturday evening and this isn't too far away from our house.

Then again Saturday evening, we heard the threats of dangerous weather. Hubs and I were on our way back from Sam's Club when my stepmother called in a panic asking us where we were at. We told her we were near the Mayflower exit and asked why. We had no idea what was going on - we were listening to XM radio and had heard none of the warnings. She then informed us that there was a funnel cloud spotted at the Mayflower exit - right where we were. We looked up and sure enough - there was a funnel cloud rotating and trying to drop down. Our truck was being knocked around slightly from the wind. We took the exit, trying to get away from the rotation in case it did finally drop all the way down. Little did we know, we were going in the same direction as it was. We drove out to the middle of nowhere, listening to the live weather reports on the radio station, and calling my parents to get more info every 5 minutes. We couldn't go home - that rotation was going to go straight over our house! It's very, very scary to see something like that and be stuck in your truck and not a home near you to go into and hide. We drove through small towns and heard their sirens going off. We kept a look out to the sky - which was all shades of black and blue. Finally, we made it to my grandparent's house - where everyone was riding out the storm.
Thankfully, that rotation never touched down. They said there were at least 8 different storm cells that moved through our state that night. Each one, capable of producing a tornado. Thank God, we were all safe.

I just wanted to say Thank You to everyone who left me a comment wondering if we were affected by the storms. Thankfully, my family was lucky and untouched, but there are many who were not.

Close Call

It was very foggy this morning and I was driving my morning commute into work on I430 (South). I430 is 3 lanes across and I was in the left hand lane and had just went over the river bridge. There was a pickup truck that was riding my tail all the way across the bridge. I was doing 72 in a 65. At times, I couldn't see this guy's headlights because he was so close to me. Well, I guess he decided that he wanted to go faster and he attempted to pass me.

He swerved into the lane on the right of me and the next thing I see in my rear view mirror is him spinning around and his truck hitting the wall a few times. His truck finally came to a stop and I couldn't see if he had hit the car that was in that lane or had managed to dodge them.
I couldn't pull over to see if he was okay because there was no median. So, I called 911 from my cell phone. I decided that was probably quicker than my OnStar (trust me, I've used OnStar before).

There is a guy who also works here to has the same commute and I asked him if he saw a 2nd car and he said he did but he couldn't tell if they had been hit or had just pulled over to help - since they were on the other side of the interstate on the right hand median. He also said that the truck was still in the lane against the wall - blocking most of that lane. It being so foggy - if someone's not paying attention, I'm sure that's another accident waiting to happen.

So, I definitely had a close call this morning. That guy was just inches away from my back bumper - he could've easily clipped me, causing me to spin around and hit that wall too.

I said a prayer for him and the other car (if there was one) and I feel slightly at peace since I called 911, but I do still feel like I should've found a spot to pull over. I just pray the driver(s) is alright. I gave the 911 dispatch great directions - for once I actually knew if I was going North or South and I knew the exit number this all happened near. The Lord knew I needed to pay attention this morning and know these things.

I was just thinking this morning about how hectic my life (and hub's) has been and how I wished things would slow down some. I guess this just brought me back to reality and how I need to be thankful for every second - no matter how hectic.

Edited to Add: The news has said that they've closed that bridge now due to "frozen fog." It was 28 degrees this morning, but now I wonder if he hit another car or if he hit a patch of frozen fog... Also to note, there are now around 6 wrecks on that bridge. This morning was definitely a close call.