>The Calm Before the Storm

>I wrote this last night, shortly before the Starbucks employee told me I had about 15 minutes to get home before the storm hit. That storm leveled 30 houses and killed 12 people about ten minutes up the road from me, but the Ferrier family is okay. I’ll write more about it over at Parents later today. Assuming that Bruiser gives me five damn minutes to myself.

I was sitting in Starbucks, bleary-eyed and idealess. I try to spend two evenings a week there writing away from Punky and Bruiser, my otherwise adorable children whose sole mission in life seems to be preventing me from sitting down. Ever.

Not surprisingly, though, the words wouldn’t come. I’d had five hours of sleep the night before; what was I thinking even attempting to transcribe coherent thoughts onto the computer screen? Not only was I completely incapable of working on my column, I couldn’t even think of a blog post.

That’s when they showed up.

“Let’s book it,” the first one said loudly as he came through the door. He wore extra-thick eyeglasses, an Indiana Jones hat and a vest filled with gadgets. “We have to get to our location by 21 hundred hours.”

Purposefully, two chubby guys in black and a Velma-looking chick shuffled in behind him. One of them put a laptop down on a table. Another one casually tossed down an oversized book of roadmaps.

“Get us wired, wouldja, Gizmo?” Indiana said to one of the Men in Black. “I’ll get the sustenance.”

Velma sat down and began paging through the roadmaps while Gizmo attempted to get a wireless connection on the laptop. Soon, the other two guys returned laden with coffee drinks and saran-wrapped cookies. They began loading their Starbucks cups with packet after packet after packet of sugar.

“Where’d you get this screensaver?” Gizmo asked, squinting up at Indiana.

“A friend sent it to me. It’s an F-5 outside of Huntsville.” He looked around surreptitiously, to see if anyone was paying attention. Quickly, I looked down at my screen and stifled a snort. I had realized that I was witnessing in the flesh the stuff YouTube legends were made of…

Stormchasers.

“Geez, would you like some coffee with your sugar?” Velma asked Indiana, giggling. He looked at her manfully.

“If this thing blows up like I think it will,” he assured her, “then I’m gonna need all the liquid energy I can get.”

The other guy in black ran a hand nervously through his frizzy ponytail. “We should get on the road now, Net or not,” he said, checking his watch. “Destination, Clarksville.”

“Come on, troops,” Indiana concurred. “Let’s go see some rotation.” The others scrambled to their feet.

I sighed and looked down at my computer screen. Where was I? Oh yeah…

I was wondering what on earth I would blog about next.