Snow?...In June?...In Nebraska?.... (Warning - this is a long one)

It sure looks like snow, doesn't it? These photos were taken the evening of Friday, June 27th at about 7pm. Two hours earlier a sudden, violent, and crazy storm blew (quite literally!) through the Omaha metro area. Matt and I were not at home as we had planned to spend the evening at the Summer Arts Festival in downtown and the storm literally followed him as he drove across Omaha toward Creighton. We waited out the storm in my office and then decided to head home. We knew our house had sustained some damage before we arrived home because Matt called out neighbor, Lee, and Lee told him that our garage door was damaged along with everyone else's on our block. We managed to get home fairly quickly on the interstate, which was a surprise because we heard reports of power outages and traffic jams caused by power outages across the city. We decided to drive to my parent's house first because neither of them were home and their is very unprotected. You can see what greeted us in the picture below:

Those are hosta plants that prior to Friday night were huge, green, leafy and gorgeous. Now it looks like someone ran them through a shredder. Behind the hosta plants was this sight:

This is my parent's air conditioner - which is looks like someone took a baseball bat to it. You can see all of the dented areas.

We made our way around my parents house and except for some MAJORLY damaged plants, bushes and trees, it appeared that their house was in pretty good condition. So, we headed to our house. I'm including pictures below of some of the many sites that we found.

You can see our majorly mangled garage door. It looks like someone took both sides of it and twisted it around. My car was, at the time, stuck inside the garage and there was absolutely no way that we lift it up. The hail you see in the last picture is what was piled inside of the left side of our garage. The wind was blowing so hard that it blew rain and hail all the way to the back wall of the garage after it blew the bottom of the door inward. It also blew the cover of the opening to our attic in the garage upward and dropped the cover back down sideways.

You can also see that the storm blew one of our downspouts off and literally wrung the remainder of the downspout like a dishrag.

We found the downspout in our backyard.

The storm completely shredded the screen off of our bedroom window.

And if you look closely in this picture, you can see the leaves from our gorgeous front yard tree absolutely plastered to the side of our house :(

Matt had to use the hose to get them off.

Once we had assessed the damage outside and made a list of items to discuss with the insurance company, I headed upstairs to change my clothes so we could start some clean up and we were also going to wander around the neighborhood to see how everyone else faired.

Unfortunately, I found this in our bedroom.

Somehow, water got through our bedroom window, ran down the wall, and across the floor. We don't own a wet/dry vacuum so I headed to my parent's house to borrow theirs. I spent the next hour or so vacuuming water out of the carpet and have spent the last four days running fans in our bedroom so we don't get mold.

Matt and I certainly did not count on having to use the insurance that we arranged for last October so soon, but we certainly appreciate the necessity of it now. There was so much damage in the Omaha metro that most of the insurance companies sent catastrophy teams to the area and have been able to respond quickly. Our adjustor visited today and actually dropped a check by our house tonight. We will definitely be arranging for a new front door, a new bedroom window (there are cracks around the seal of the window) and half of our roof (the part that faces west) needs to be reshingled.

We drove around a little on Friday night and traveled to 132nd and Maple, which was completely without power because the power lines were hanging on top of buildings and trees.

The picture above is of a gas station that was hit by wind so violent that it literally shredded the metal off of the sign.

We definitely consider ourselves lucky in the grand scheme of things. Some homes in Omaha are still without power four days after the storm and some estimates indicate it could be Saturday before power is fully restored. Several of our neighbors have damage far worse than ours - windows completely broken by wind and hail, fences literally ripped from the ground or twisted a million times, outside playsets that are completely toppled, and a deck hanging from the back of a house. Our neighbor two doors down had part of his roof completely ripped off and unfortunately his ceiling fell in on Sunday sometime. And one of our neighbors about a block away just finished building a new deck on their house, only to have it hit by a huge section of the fence, and to have most of the vertical supports disappear.

And just so everyone knows, the hail was still in our yard Saturday morning.

He would want a party..

One my my dad's best friends, Ron "Flip" Filkins, died this morning. I'm still a little bit in shock. My dad has a very close group of friends that he has known since high school (or longer) and they get together frequently. Most live in the Omaha/CB area, but Flip has lived away from the area of years and currently lives in Bardstown, KY and was the publisher of a newspaper. Flip (which is virtually the only thing I have every called him) was a funny, quirky, intelligent guy who always had a smile on his face and a great story to tell. My sister interned for his paper during the summer of 2004 and actually lived with Flip and his wife Kathleen in Bardstown. He was thrilled that she accepted the position and she has many stories from spending the summer with them. Flip and Kathleen also gave Matt and I one of the wedding gifts we use and discuss the most - our wonderful ice cream maker.

My family spent the day sharing memories of Flip and decided that he would not want any of us to be sad. In fact, he is probably wondering why we are not beginning to plan the party, because he is the first one who would have RSVP'd.

God speed, Flip. You will be missed.

Confessions...

My husband is out tonight and I have to admit that I am really enjoying it. Not that I don't love spending time with him, but I do enjoy being by myself sometimes. I'm somewhat jealous of him this summer because he is able to spend alot of time home alone since he isn't teaching or working this summer. I like being able to watch what I want to watch on TV - which usually means flipping channels for me as I hate commercials, and being able to have my own schedule. This evening, for example, I ate a small snack when I got home (shredded wheat with milk), ran something over to my parents, and then headed to a Pilates class. After the class I came home, made my lunch for tomorrow and then finally got around to eating dinner at about 9:15pm. I always feel guilting having a schedule like this when Matt is around because I know he likely does not want to wait to eat that late, but we like to have dinner together so their is a conflict. Matt started holding open field nights for the softball team on Monday and Thursday nights this week so I will be able to enjoy a little time alone a couple nights a week now. I'm sure I will get used to it, as Matt will be gone frequently once softball season starts in August.

I titled this blog confessions and you just got my first one. Here is the second - I'm really unhappy with myself right now. Two years ago, in preparation for fitting into a wedding dress in front of a huge group of people, I started working out, hired a trainer, and lost about 15lbs. in about 8 months, while gaining a ton of muscle. I was absolutely in the best shape of my life. Then I got married, moved in with Matt (whom I had lived apart from for over 6 months), and completely ditched working out. Needless to say, I gained all the weight back (and then some) and have been generally pretty unhappy with myself since then. I actually manage to "convince" myself most of the time when I look in the mirror that the way I look isn't that bad, and I also tend to ignore signs I get when I am easily out of breath, or feel uncomfortable in my clothing.

However, I was recently looking at photos of myself and realized that I can no longer ignore the signs. I spent hours upon hours of time working out two years ago, felt great the day I got married, and then reversed the whole process for absolutely no reason other than the fact that I always decided I had something better to do than work out.

So, I have vowed that I will begin working out again and I have also decided that I am going to completely overhaul my diet. My diet really did not change two years ago, which is likely the reason that I only lost 15lbs. I'm also holding myself accountable by making the results public via this blog. I plan to post everthing - from measurements, weight, pictures, the whole works. Last time, it was far too easy for me to forget all of the progress I had made, and this time I want proof!

I pulled out the tape measure tonight and went to town. I'll probably only be doing this monthly and I'll probably adjust to the first of the month from now on.

Right Arm: 11.75

Left Arm: 11.25

Upper Chest: 37

Chest: 41.5

Lower Chest: 34.5

Waist: 36

Hips: 42.5

Right Leg: 26.75

Left Leg: 26

Weight: 175.9

I'll probably take pictures later this week and post them. I actually find it very relaxing to pack my lunch for work and take it. I've never really done this before as I ate at the Union most of the time at Truman, I ate in downtown Lincoln most of the time when I was at UNL, and at the Student Center or out prior to now at Creighton. For the last week I have been planning out my lunch and taking every day and it is such a relief to not have to worry everyday about where I will eat lunch and what will be available. I also find I actually get to spend more time "at lunch" rather than getting lunch. All in all - a win-win situation :)

Tonight when I got ready to leave the gym after my class (a great class, btw) the car that parked to my left was parked so close to my car that I could not open the door more than a couple of inches. The parking lot at the gym is often very crowded and people tend to park everywhere, and not necessarily in the lines. However, I know the particular spot was empty when I parked and I know that the spot was plenty big enough for a car the park within the lines. I walked back inside and asked the guy at the desk to page the owner and ask them to move their car, and after waiting about 10 minutes realized that no one was going to move the car. So, I went out and climbed over the passenger seat of the car into the driver's seat - which is no easy task considering my car is a small, manual shift. I thought about leaving a note telling them to be more considerate when parking, but I didn't. I should have, because the whole situation was completely rediculous, but I didn't.

Headache - blech!

I'm plagued by a headache tonight. I used to get migraines every once in awhile, but those stopped several years ago (thank goodness - they were a pain while I was in college), but now I get really annoying full body headaches. My head hurts, my shoulders ache, and I'm nausous. Worst of all, I'm completely out of it and get really annoyed when someone tries to talk to me or "bothers me". My poor husband - I'm not much company for him when I have a headache like this. I've taken pain killers and they don't really help - at least this time they didn't. I'll update tomorrow once I feel a little bit better.

A typical summer weekend....

I can't believe how quickly summer is flying by! It is almost the fourth of July and once that passes I always feel like we are on a countdown to the start of the fall semester, Labor Day, and for me, the start of travel season. My traveling is really going to pick up this fall because I am taking on some new territories. I'm adding Washington and Idaho to my normal territory and made the decision to do some fall travel in Oregon as well. Oregon is typically a spring travel season for us, but my spring travel went so well that I'm adding it to fall to see if we can increase interest in Creighton in that area. It is making for some interesting trips for me - including a crazy trip through Idaho, to Sacramento, CA and then to LA (I'll be gone almost two weeks straight), but I think it will be fun. Traveling alone is a very interesting process. I tend to read many, many books during travel season because I carry a book with me everywhere I go and this year I am hoping I can get some crochet projects done too. Carrying yarn hardly adds any weight and since most of my travel is on the west coast I can get some work done on the plane. I'm looking foward to getting my travel plans (plane tickets, hotel and car reservations) settled because that is usually the most difficult and time consuming part of the process.

Matt and I had a pretty relaxing weekend overall. I spent Friday night with Lisa watching the CWS (LSU vs. UNC) and working on my latest crochet project. I'll post pictures once I have more of the project done because it has an interesting pattern when finished, but it is hard to see while it is in process. I was searching online for yarn this morning and found some great stuff at Bernat which is a company I have not purchased yarn from before. I often have about 20 projects I want to work on, but try very hard to only have one project going at a time because I tend to have problems 1. getting things finished and 2. not getting confused when I have more than one project going at a time.

Matt and I walked in the Elkhorn Days parade with Jim's campaign yesterday. Parades are strange because the candidates have to do them (particularly when their opponents walk in them as well), but I'm unsure of the effectiveness because the public does not really learn anything about the candidate by seeing them in a parade. I doubt most people even know what the candidate is running for or what party they are a member of when the parade is over. It was a very nice day yesterday so Matt and I did not mind spending a chunk of our day at the par

Matt and I spent yesterday afternoon putting together the hutch we purchased for our dining room. We picked it out a long time ago at Target but had not yet purchased it because we had other priorities. It went on clearance about two weeks ago which prompted us to go ahead and purchase it. The hutch has been in pieces (the box did not fit in either of our cars so we had to take it out of the box to get it home) in our living room for two weeks. Below you will see the pictures of our dining room before we added this new piece and our dining room after. We are pretty happy with the results and I am thrilled to have someplace to store our serving pieces.