thunderstorms, twisters, and floods, oh my

The title of my post is slightly misleading; while we've definitely had thunderstorms (including one at 4am today, and another tonight with thunder that felt like the awesome vibrations you get in a surround-sound theatre during a battle scene) and multiple tornado watches, our county has not seen anything like the flooding going on to our north. Yes, fields are flooded, my usual route to Des Moines is closed due to flooding at one of the key intersections, and we've gotten an absurd amount of rain, but you just can't believe the devastation in other parts of the state.

Case in point -- my parents talked to some old family friends today who live in Cedar Rapids. Jan was in high school when I was little and is the reason that I started playing the flute, but now she works for Cedar Rapids' Czech museum (and is the mother of brand-new twins). Cedar Rapids has been hit by record flooding, with hundreds of homes evacuated, and Jan's museum is going to be closed through the end of the year in an effort to salvage and restore their artifacts :(

The local news is always much more weather-focused than anything you'll see in the Bay Area; the weather here is more extreme, more people make a living off of the earth, and (in my opinion) it gives people something to talk about. But they've started doubling their six o'clock news coverage, and the footage in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, Mason City, etc. is incredible. It's also incredible to see the number of volunteers who consistently turn out to sandbag levees; volunteers are credited with saving Cedar Falls, for example, and they're sandbagging all night tonight in Des Moines.

The tornado that struck the Boy Scout camp in western Iowa last night was really tragic, though. Our local CBS affiliate did a story on one of the kids who was killed -- he was fourteen years old, had already become an Eagle Scout, and sounds like a fantastic, caring kid who volunteered and tried to improve his community. His big project was making pillows for other kids who were admitted to the local hospitals, and he had even sent one to one of the news reporters when he broke his leg this winter. The news reporter was planning to do a feature on his volunteerism this summer, but instead he had to do a piece about his death. If that's not a tearjerker, I don't know what is.

So anyway, the weather is all that's going on here. Yesterday I played Wii, watched the news/weather, and went with my mother to the last secret society meeting of the season (hosted by Heather, who used to work at the same convenience store as me and Katie, so it was great to see her). Today, I watched the news/weather, read most of my romance novel, ate some delicious mashed potato patties that my mother made (take leftover mashed potatoes, form them into patties, and flour and fry them), and made a batch of chocolate chip chewies. I also participated in a v. quick rush to get vehicles into my father's shop in town to predict them from a line of baseball-sized hail that was coming up out of Missouri, but the hail missed us, as it always does when you're actually prepared.

Now I should go to bed; tomorrow I need to finish the last ~60 pages of my novel and figure out a plan of attack for polishing it into a better second draft. Goodnight!