How absolutely lovely of you, hopflower! The weather was pretty touch and go there for a day or so, and at one point, it looked like we were the center of the bullseye, but, thank God, the storm turned about 20 miles south of us and for the most part passed to the north. I am very grateful for your concern. It could have been ever so much worse. I have been thinking of you too, hoping that you dodged the mudslides and other California disasters we have been hearing about. In the meantime, I have been reading, reading, reading. I am so utterly fascinated with the two bulb books I got! You really put me onto a winner.

Just for the record the north east area of Indiana has been hit with sever outbreaks of tornado since the 1950's. In about 1961 there was an out break that spread tornadoes over most of that area. In that one I spent my summer of reconstructing houses that had been damaged by the tornadoes. Several years later another out break completely cut the power to the city of Fort Wayne as tornadoes took down all of the main power lines in all direction of the city. I was in College for that one and had trouble get gas to get to school, as there was no power for the gasoline pumps. People start worrying about global warming when their insignificant portion the the earth experiences extremely high or low temperatures or when when a couple of random tornadoes occur. The surface of the earth can be calculate by the formula: Surface Area of a Sphere = 4 X pi X r^2. The radius of the earth is 3964.14 miles. So you can figure how insignificant the area you live is and its effect on the earths climate.

Thank you all for the well wishes. This working nights gets in the way of a lot of things, and that was the delay in my checking in...That and a new system and a secretary who decided to take off, so I had a brand new system I had to work with (which I actually kind of liked when I got used to it) and I had to do the secretaries job as well as mine to do. I had no spare time for quite a while there. Eighteen years is long enough to work nights. Rita, I've always lived where there was a tornado "season". The closest I have actually been to one was one block...Plenty close enough. Friday night there were three people killed by the storm that had passed south of to us...It did only tree and power line damage here (I wish it had blown a few more limbs out of the big oak tree in back). The town where it hit is only 50 miles from us. Another one hit in Tuscaloosa which is much closer, so it was not a good night, but we were truly blessed. kay

I was watching the SEC tournament, with Mississippi State playing Alabama, in the Georgia Dome. The building started to shake, catwalks and other structures high up in the dome began to sway, debris fell onto the court, insulation floated around. Most people stayed where they were, some left their area. Game stopped, with 2 minutes left, players went to locker rooms, everyone scurried! Great camera work! The game was delayed about an hour, then finished up. The second game was postponed. No one inside the dome was injured. People were told to stay in the dome, which was safer than the streets. CNN building was damaged, OMNI hotel damaged, lots of info on CNN. Very scary.