Current location:	vicksburg
Current mood:	tired
Current music:	my mom cooking dinner in the kitchen
Entry tags:	big huge storm, fondren desolation, jxn, scary shit

they say we may not have power til wednesday...
here's a video i can only get the audio to work :( i'm at my parent's house, they have dial-up, grr!

it was so scary yesterday, i don't think even with the severe weather alerts that anyone expected what we got. i decided to run home on my lunch hour. when i left work it was overcast but not raining or anything. the closer i got to fondren the darker the sky got. christy texted me and said "i'm worried about you. tornado! come back." i knew it was going to be bad because as i passed the little complex where real estate solutions has a rental available (the one i looked at that didn't have a fullsized fridge) i saw the tree leaning at a 45 degree angle. i thought "it's going to go down, it's going to go down onto that power line." i was almost to ridgeway when BOOM!!!!! the rain came seemingly out of nowhere. it was so hard and fast, i almost drove past my house because i couldn't see.

there was already a huge limb down in my driveway. i parked next to the porch and ran inside just as the hail started. lisa was there and we were talking about it when the power went off. it came back on briefly and then went off again. luckily i had time to find the flashlight before it went off for good. i looked out the front door, and right next door a tree went down taking the power lines with it. i was so scared i was shaking. i asked lisa if she thought we needed to get the cats and go to a safe place in the house. then courtney and hailey called, they had been leaving umc on their way to our house to pick up lisa when it hit. with the powerlines and trees down they were trying to find a way to get to our house safely.

a huge tree went down right in front of them! hailey got it all on her cell phone, if she puts it on youtube i will post it. it's pretty dramatic, hailey is video-taping out the windhshield and courtney is talking to their mom telling her what's going on, sort of narrating. then out of nowhere, a fucking tree just falls right in front of their car. they're screaming and crying, it was nuts dude. then their mom calls lisa and says that there's a power line on their car, they're on pinehurst which is the road just down from our house. they're in the car and they're scared. we have no idea what to do so we start walking to where they are. it was unbelievable, power lines down everywhere. a tree took down a whole power pole on pinehurst. there was a gigantic tree almost completely blocking state street between our house and meadowbrook.

here's a house on the corner of state and northside, about a mile or two from my house. i called work and they said wait til it blows over to come back. looking at fondren, i couldn't imagine what it looked like between my house and work. i had to go back though because our vicksburg office completely lost power. the tree that fell right next door was blocking the lane & turning lane so only the oncoming lane was open. the power line was in the road but luckily i managed to get around it fine.

i couldn't believe all the trees down, huge gigantic old trees that were uprooted like they were nothing or big round trunks that splintered like twigs. fondren got the worst of it that i saw. as i headed back south on state street the light was out at dulling, and the fondren beverage imporium big heavy metal sign had blown into the street. everything was without power up til about umc. the light at old canton was working thankfully, however the light at state and woodrow wilson was out. lemme tell you, that scared me shitless. usually people begin treating intersections like 4-way stops when the lights don't work, but woodrow wilson and state is such a big intersection with so many lanes going different directions it was complete pandamonium. i feared for my life. once i got through that, it was fine. just limbs and leaves down everywhere, but nothing like what it was in fondren.

luckily by the time i left work they had cops directing traffic at that intersection. the power came back on at cups about 6:15, but we're still without power at home. they say it could be wednesday, but most places should have it back by tomorrow night. i can't believe that 94,000 people were without power yesterday and 52,000 are still without it today, mostly in the metro jackson area according to the clarion ledger. my parents were out at dogwood when it hit, they were in kohl's and they made everyone go to the middle of the store. my mom said old fannin was closed completely.

we got really lucky though, with all the big trees that are around our house, one could've easily come through the roof. it was all over in about an hour, but they're saying it's worse than what hurricane katrina did to jackson. i was really scared, i don't think i stopped shaking for that whole hour. hailey said that when the tree went down her life flashed before her eyes and she thought "i can't die yet i'm too young." yeah, she's 16 but even now for me at 27 i thought the same thing "i'm too young to die." all i could think about was firstly that i had to make sure the cats were ok, and second i thought of freddi and how far away she was and how i didn't want to die without having a chance to see her again...

i'm going to spend the night down here tonight if lisa doesn't text me to say that the power's back on at home. i don't really like the idea of having to get up at 5:30am monday morning to drive to go to work but i also know that i won't sleep well without my noisemaker or fan. i slept with my cd player listening to matthew good last night (for some reason he's my #1 choice to listen to while sleeping. he soothes me) but because it was a cd not my ipod (i still haven't reloaded the mp3s on it) i woke up every time it ended and had to re-start it.

argh. and the thing that makes me maddest (yes i know that's not really a word) is that i had just been to the grocery store thursday night and spent $80 on food, and now it's all going to be ruined. i brought my big bags of frozen fish and stuff down here, but i couldn't salvage everything. it sucks so much. :(