what the devil?

So the other day I was at work here in good ol' Springfield, MO, and glancing out the windows in the front it seemed that the weather had turned a bit to the nasty side, after two days of 70+ temperatures. Turned out there was a string of severe thunderstorms/tornadoes heading straight through Springfield and the surrounding area. In January. Thankfully, no one I know was injured, or had damage beyond a few downed tree limbs, but for christ's sake. It's January. Tornadoes belong in August, maybe July or September, but this is just ridiculous. So we sat up for awhile once I got home playing Scrabble and listening to sirens and watching storms just barely miss us, woke up at 2:30 and went down to the basement (which, we realized later, would be pretty useless if something did happen, because we have no blankets, food, or water down there, and were in our pajamas) and stayed until around 3:30 I'm guessing, during which time I heard the loudest wind I've ever heard in my life, and for the first time actually ran downstairs because I thought for a brief moment that things might actually start flying away (at least the windows were rattling quite a bit). So we sat in the basement and I tried to play guitar (that was what I grabbed...weird) and then the power went out. It came back about 8 the next day, so that wasn't too bad. And after the power came back on and I had breakfast and so forth, my dear old dad mentioned that one of the tornadoes had touched down and basically followed a road that runs a little less than a mile north of my house.

So...that was interesting. In other news, the Chicago APA meeting pretty much rocked my socks off. I got the landmark Herodotus (it's like a study bible, only for Herodotus, with lots of maps and pretty pictures and references and other sweetness) for $10 ($10!!!), heard some good papers, saw some old friends, ate some good Indian food, and generally had a grand time.

And...there was something else I was going to say. Oh, right. Missouri...every time I leave, or rather, every time I get into a discussion with people from the northland that fervently believe Missouri is the south, I tend to forget the distinctive accent you find here. I maintain that it is not southern, nor is Missouri in the south. Instead, I would say that Missouri is at the crossroads between Midwest, South, West, and Great Plains. The culture is well reflected in the accent we tend to have here, which I would term "hick", if I can do that in a non-offensive way (both to hicks and non-hicks). It is an accent that has not taken over my speech, thanks to my parents being from various other parts of the country and my having traveled a fair amount and thereby neutralized my accent for the most part. But it is fun, every so often, to return to what I suppose are the closest things to roots I will ever have and indulge in the twangy drawl that I find so endearing.

On that note, I should do some Hebrew...tata.