The Week

The rain, the rain. It’s been crazy, it really has. It’s too much. This area is not used to it. Rivers are overflowing, creek banks are eroding, and I’ve seen a couple photos of people whose creekside back yards are now half as big as they were due to the erosion.

Here’s a shot from Sunday. The winds were easily 40mph if not more. This is my neighbor’s house. The flag was horizontal. I grew up with tropical storms and occasional hurricanes, and I’ve gotta say that for about 20 minutes this little storm was like being in one. Local TV stations didn’t say a damn thing about it until it had moved eastward and was in Dallas County. Thanks for nothing.



And the next day when I went to lunch at my favorite hoagie shop, I saw this. They’d sustained serious water damage during the weekend storms. When I was there the insurance man had just left, and the proprietors had no idea what they were facing.



***

I picked up MOBB’s new headlamp Tuesday after work. Again, we were being hammered by rain as I hit the salvage yard. It was a different crew in there this time. Beer cans were lined up on the counter, and the man who rang me up said something nonsensical over and over. After trying to get him to clarify what he’d said three times, I went with plan B, which was to merely exclaim “Oooooooh!” like I suddenly understood.

I paid. I left.

And as I left, a man and a woman began to shove each other in the parking lot. I know this isn’t a great shot, but that’s what I was trying to capture. The rain’s making those junkyard folks crazy, man.



***

Something startling happened yesterday: I put in the new headlamp with just about zero problems. I’m… not used to this. Really. I’m used to, you know, the bolts being in awful-to-reach places, not having the right size socket, brittle plastic snapping, dropping screws… nope. I hammed out the dent as well as I could, popped in the new headlamp and was good to go almost immediately. I’m quite stunned. The automotive gods are clearly pleased with me.

The Hoods came down, and we had a mighty fine lunch at Outback Steakhouse. Gotta watch that Hood, man… he’s good enough with kids that he’d be a natural at being a father.

And of course, we went and saw fireworks last night.

Hurst had canceled theirs (dang), so we hit Haltom City. We were caught in a traffic snarl for a bit, and barely got there before they started. But we were positioned perfectly. THEGIRL sat on my lap in the driver’s seat, and THEBOY sat on MOBB’s lap in the passenger seat. We had a perfect view.

But after THEGIRL accidentally started the windshield wipers about six times and broke wind in my face a couple, MOBB and I traded. I got THEBOY in exchange for THEGIRL and a pet to be named later.

(Nyuk nyuk)

Ya’ll have a good week.