Supermegafantastahyperupdate!

Well, this is what happens when I don’t make blog entires in a timely fashion. Now there’s so much stuff piled up that I’d have to write a small novel to cover it all. So let’s just take a look at the big three events of the past two weeks or so.

Now that it’s May, all of our favorite television shows will be pulling out the usual plot contrivances for the finals sweeps period of the season. Things aren’t much different here – today’s tale contains a new addition to the household, a whirlwind trip to an exciting destination and a potentially life-threatening but ultimately insignificant brush with a natural disaster.

So let’s begin, shall we?

Old San Antonio Road Trip

We had been meaning to take The Boy on a smallish road trip to San Antonio for some time and a couple of weekends ago we finally had a real reason to make the trip (more than later), so we both took a Friday off from work and headed to America’s seventh largest city for a couple of days.

We kept it fairly low key – just spent some time at the zoo and along the Riverwalk, but the boy seemed to have a pretty good time. Staying in a motel is always exciting for him, even if its a marginally seedy Motel 6 in a less than ritzy part of town (or as The Boy insisted on calling it – Hotel 6).

The great thing about four-year-olds is that they’re fairly easy to impress. He thought the Riverwalk was pretty cool and when we ate dinner at Casa Rio he spent more time looking at the water than he did eating his food. By far the best part of the evening for him, though, was riding on one of the boats and staring at people along the banks. Once he noticed the boats, it was all he could talk about until he finally got on board.

The following day we hit the zoo, which quite frankly beats the pants off both the Houston and Denver zoos. The Boy decided to obsess on looking at the zoo map, so every four seconds or so we had to whip it out and reverify our position. Despite his cartographic preoccupation, he did manage to bond with a baby monkey, see some other animals and ride the train.

What a b****!

The real purpose behind our trip to San Antonio, however, was to add yet another mouth to feed at our house. After wanting one for years, we finally got our act together and adopted a retired greyhound.

Well, retired is a bit of a stretch. Although bred by racing people and coming from a line of champion racers, our little Moncita (mon-CHEE-tah) never actually took part in an official race herself. But she’s still plenty fast.

Except for the approximately twenty-two hours a day she spends sleeping on our couch. No, really. The Dog likes to sleep. A lot. Preferably with all four feet sticking up in the air and with her tongue hanging out of her mouth.

She seems to love us though and The Boy has decided to become best buddies with her, so it looks like she’ll work out just fine. The only one in the house who hasn’t welcomed her with open arms is The Cat. But she’s slowly learning to accept her new long-legged comrade. In fact, she can now slink past The Dog without hissing at her.

I’ll get you… and your little dog too!

Two days after returning from San Antonio, bad weather moved into the area. Some really bad weather.

The Wife and I woke up around three in the morning because it sounded like hail was pounding the windows. It wasn’t hail, but the wind was blowing so hard it was pelting the rain against the window panes. We weren’t happy about being woken up, but everything seemed fine. A few minutes later, that all changed.

People say that a tornado sounds like a train, but as someone who lives fairly close to train tracks and hears about a dozen trains go by each day, I can tell you – not so much. In fact, the high-pitched humming we heard was so different from the usual train rumble that we sensed immediately that something was up. The sudden drop in air pressure inside the house, the popping sound coming from all the windows and the good 10-15 seconds of the gentle but undeniable shaking also told us that strange things were afoot.

When the sun came up the next morning, it became apparent that a fairly significant storm had pushed though. The vet clinic behind our house had its roof torn off and thrown into a gas station across the street. Nearly everyone on their street had all of the fences knocked down. Trees in people’s yards were snapped off at the base of their trunks. The people two houses down had $20,000 worth of structural and roof damage.

Our damages – one section of fence and some blown-over greenery. All in all, I’d say we’re pretty lucky.

Well, that does it for updating everyone. More to come soon.