Pam, In Oklahoma, our middle name is "bad weather". I think that tornadoes are my least favorite form of bad weather, although hail storms rank a close second. At least with hurricanes, y'all know it is coming and you even have a pretty reasonable idea a day or two beforehand where it will make landfall. You have wind speed estimations, elaborate storm surge maps and forecasts, etc. Up to a point, you know what to expect and about when to expect it. With tornadoes, it is their very speed and randomness, as well as their unpredictable nature, that makes them so scary. I think I could handle living in a hurricane-prone area better than living in a tornado-prone area. Much remains to be learned about tornadoes. I think the NWS does an outstanding job of telling us when the conditions exist for tornado development, but it must be our job to pay attention, heed the warnings, and be alert and aware and ready to seek shelter, because no one can predict the precise location where all those conditions will come together at any given moment and form a tornado---or a dozen tornadoes---or a hundred tornadoes. No one can predict if any specific tornado that forms will be a pretty mild EF-0 or a severely horrific Ef-4 or EF-5. No one can predict how long they will last, although the NWS does warn us of days when long-track tornadoes are more likely to occur. I am glad you and yours were safe when the tornado hit your village, and I know your husband and his chainsaw were greatly appreciated. Looking at the damage I'm guessing it likely was an F-2 or a very low-end F-3? It is wonderful y'all were able to help. A couple of years ago, a small community in the county adjacent to ours was hit by an F-4 tornado in February. It was the worst damage I've ever seen from a tornado because the county I live in doesn't have nearly as many tornadoes as other parts of Oklahoma, and when we have them, they tend to be small and fairly weak. Of course, we have only lived here 14 years, so maybe we just haven't lived here long enough to see a big one here. My DH was one of the dozens of emergency responders who spent the next 24 hours on search and rescue efforts, assisting the storm victims in any way possible. It warms my heart to see how many people respond and help, and every bit of that help is needed. Oklahoma City is hit by more tornadoes than any other city in the United States. Since records began being kept, there's been over 140 hit the OKC area, according to info on the NWS Norman Weather Office's website. The records date back to the late 1800s. We moved here in 1999, just a couple of months before the horrific 1999 tornadoes hit OKC-Moore and other communities. Prior to that, in our head, tornadoes hit people "out there" in tornado alley but I don't think my DH and I had thought they'd ever be a threat to us. After we saw the magnitude of the damage in the OKC area, which is a little over 100 miles north of us, we had a tornado shelter put in before spring of 2000 rolled around. Have we used it? Oh yes, several times a year. Have we had tornadoes near us? Yes, within our county and in the adjacent counties, but so far not any on the ground within maybe 20 miles of us. We've been lucky. Oklahoma weather drives us gardeners nearly crazy. It doesn't matter how beautiful your yard and landscape may be, how lush, beautiful and productive your veggie garden might be, or how heavily loaded with fruit, your fruit trees, brambles or berry plants might be---the OK weather can wipe it out in the blink of an eye. While tornadoes are a huge threat, we also often have very destructive severe thunderstorms, usuallly accompanied by high winds and often by hail in very large sizes that demolishes everything. We have derecho winds that blow through and flatten plants to the ground. We don't often have a lot of snow storms that cause damage, but very destructive ice storms are fairly common. I'd take a heavy snow storm over a light ice storm any day of the week, but we don't get to chose which one we get. Rain often comes in two forms here--either almost none at all for long periods of time, or inches and inches at once, often resulting in flash flooding. Gardening in Oklahoma is not for sissies! Earthquakes have always occurred in Oklahoma, but many of them are too small to be felt. We had a big one (big for us, but I bet folks from California would laugh at us because it was not big at all compared to theirs) last year that was felt as far away as Dallas. It was the first one I ever had felt here. Then, a couple of weeks later, I felt another one. Once was enough for me, and twice was too many. I'll be alright if I never feel the ground shake like that again. Bon, I don't know how many earthquakes Oklahoma normally has in one year, but over 1,000 were recorded in 2010. Of those, only 103 were reported as being "felt" by humans. The rest were just recorded seismically. I haven't seen 2011's numbers. I've linked a webpage with lots of OK earthquake data on it, including recent earthquakes. I cannot help thinking that the fracking procedures being used with oil/gas wells are contributing to our more frequently-felt earthquakes. Down in the D-FW metro area where fracking has gone on at a tremendous rate for about 10 years or so, they are having fairly frequent small quakes. I grew up there and never heard of an earthquake there, not even one from long ago, until they started fracking the wells. The weather here is supposed to be just absolutely gorgeous this week, and I am looking forward to accomplishing much in the yard and garden, but we never, ever can let our guard down. You cannot be a gardener in Oklahoma without being weather-aware and, in fact, every resident of Oklahoma needs to be very aware of the weather around them at all times, not just the gardeners. It isn't that we have more weather than anyone else, but I think it changes incredibly rapidly here and it can turn violent in so many ways...and does so with great regularity. It keeps life interesting anyway. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Recent Earthquakes in Oklahoma

Well, TGIF night, that's for sure. My day started out at 9 am on the farm. No water, the frost free spout is officially frozen. We took a 50 gallon barrel to Amanda's and filled it. 3 times. Back to the farm where we dipped it out with 5 gallon buckets and filled the tank. OK, time to set hay. Except the tractor won't start. We spend about an hour trying to jump start the tractor, give up and wrap a chain around a big round bale of hay and drag it out to the animals. One egg that wasn't frozen, hooray. On the way home, we lost power steering in the truck, apparently a bearing froze up on the tensioner pulley and the belt broke. If it had been warmer than 7F, with wind chills of about -20, the truck might have overheated. We limped it to Dave's, where he fixed it and we came home. Right now there are blizzard conditions and white outs and the wind is about 25 MPH. Did I mention that I woke up with a sore throat? Elery made chicken soup for supper and I'm sitting here with a cup of tea and a bag of Hall's cough drops. Tomorrow we go out and see if we can chop down through the frozen ground to find the problem with the water. The valve is 5 feet under ground, so we may or may not get that fixed. If not, we'll be hauling water in barrels for a couple of months. (sigh) Clink with my cup of Irish Breakfast tea, and think about me about 9 am tomorrow, out in the storm, using a pick ax to break frozen ground. Yes indeed, we farmers just sit on our butts and wait for that government subsidy, that's what we do. Annie

Hi Everyone, first of all I want to say Belle, I'm soooo sorry to hear you've lost your Dearest Brother. Sharing Your Sorrow and Sending My Love. Glad to hear your done with the 6 snowmen. Hope you can find time to post these. Luvs, I went into my craft room to find something to paint and ran across the book with my turkey napkin holder pattern. It's in the book "The Mice Will Play by Jan Spanik. Hope you get your project finished and posted soon. We are getting dumped on again so anything in our yard is all covered up with snow. Sometimes I have had DH sand down a project so I can repaint but most of the time it goes to the garbage. FM, hope your sore throat is getting better. Your always talking about redoing and it makes me want to get started on some of my rooms but I'll wait until it's a little nicer out. I've wanted to add onto our home for years and it never happened. Now I'm glad we didn't. I'm thinking I'd rather do more running around than cleaning. Anj, hope you had a nice dinner w/friends. The Science projec sounds like alot of work ahead. They always seem to turn out so nice and I love it when you share them with us. Kids are so funny. I had DGD here the other night. We went out to the kitchen so we could make Valentine houses. I passed some silent gas and DGD looked at me and said "Pewie Stikie, did you do that"? Had to admit it was me and I headed to the BR for some spray. When I got back she asked if I remembered at Christmas when her uncle went to the BR and it stunk really bad. Then she said "I think he forgot to flush the toilet, don't you Nana"? I said "NO, he forgot to turn on the air exchanger and use some spray. Why on earth did she have to remember this.lol Gotta Love Em... Back to how times have changed. We didn't have a color TV until I was in Jr High. Rotary phones, 8 track tape players and records were all part of my life growing up. When I think of the new technology coming it blows me away. I'm not sure I want to learn to sell a devise that we can do everything at home from work. The one thing I've loved this winter is my electronic start, steering wheel warmer and heated seats. It's so nice to sit at my desk and start the truck and when I go out it's all warm. It will also be nice to start it before I'm heading out this summer and it will be cool. Sure wouldn't want to give up all this so guess we better march on. Was great to see Bebe has been painting more beautiful roses for us to enjoy. I best get off here and head back in and try finding a project again before it's bed time. TCMDF, Punk

" If a door opens to the left from the outside then it's to the right from the inside, so I'm not sure that would be the deciding factor vs. the space into which it swings. " Oftentimes keys are held when opening a front door. When doing so with right-side hinges, a righty needs to stand a bit to the left of the door's left edge to hold the key straight out. If there's a perpendicular wall immediately to the left of the door or otherwise no space to stand a bit to the side, that can't be done and left hinge-right side opening hardware would be easier in use. One of my kid's houses has just that arrangement, a perpendicular wall right at the edge of the door frame and so left hinges and right hardware. My two current places and ones I've owned before all had right hinge/left hardware arrangements. By my quick count, about 2/3rds of the doors pictured, where the hardware is clearly visible, were right hinge and left hardware ones. No right or wrong way but one way seems would be more convenient for the more numerous righties.