I am currently teaching myself guitar and quilting. In a week, we'll see which I'm better at. Right now, I can't feel the finger tips on my left hand, and I hear the sewing machine's rhythmic whirring in my head. Maybe I need another hobby.

~K

Just in case you were wondering, hail falling on a skylight at 2am sounds a lot like dropping marbles into a bucket.

~Kristen

It's still hot:

I sat outside for lunch today, enjoying the relative coolness after such scorching heat this week. By the end of 45 minutes I was quite toasty and ready to return to my cave of an office. After returning, I started to notice that my left shin was itchy. I looked down to see what was the matter when I noticed something strange about my shoes. It took me a minute to realize the shiny flower-bow-things were gone! Completely missing! I took a closer look and saw there were patches of exposed hot glue where the flowers should have been. It didn't take me long to figure out what had happened.

Sure enough, I walked back outside to where I had been sitting for lunch, and there under the bench was a flower. The other was sitting on the floor of my office.

So, now I can say that the weather is so hot that it melted my shoes.

(I then looked at my leg again to see what was so itchy, since I had been completely distracted by the shoe incident, to find teensy tiny cuts. Who knows what they're from. I'm pretty sure I can't blame the sun for that one.)

Here's a link to my picture from the Wisconsin State Journal. It's a really interesting gallery of pictures from around the city to go along with their article.

Here is a link to a gallery from the Capital Times

Holy Effing Flood

I think the world is ending. War all over the place, super viruses, and now this weather.

Holy shit guys, what a flood.

Sorry, I don't like to swear on my blog, but I can't say it any other way. Chalk it up to my lack of creativity when totally blown away.

I'm not going to post all the pictures here, but I thought I'd share a radar snap-shot of the area a few hours after the worst of the flooding. There were reports of 3 inches of rain falling in 20 minutes. And it just keeps raining, though it's only a drizzle here at this point.

I was stuck at an intersection for over a half hour because in every direction was water so deep that I was afraid my car was going to get stuck. You could see cars driving by on my relatively shallow strip of road with their engines smoking because they had gotten wet. There were a couple of cars with headlights partially underwater. I really shouldn't have left my house, but it flooded so much in the 15-20 minutes I went in my house to get my hedgehogs! I had no idea! The sidewalk had started to flood, but I had no idea it would be that bad! It looks like the worst in the immediate area was on the street I was trying to drive to.

I eventually turned around and drove on E. Gorham around the block to get to my house again, which took more than a half an hour because traffic was literally at a stand-still. By the time I got back, the sidewalk wasn't flooded anymore and I felt safe parking in front of my house.

Since I couldn't go anywhere, I got my camera and video recorder and walked around documenting what was going on. By the time I was out there the water had receded at least two inches, and by the end it was down at least 8. It was down 8 inches, meaning it was far more than 8 inches deep.

See my pictures at Mike's Gallery. You have to click on Kristen's album and then Flood July 27, 2006. The pictures should be up shortly (they take a very long time to load, since they're a higher quality than I normally take).

~K

Is this love? Or is it indigestion?

I think this would make a good song. I bet someone has already written it. If not maybe I will. I've always meant to write music. I bet I could if I could get used to putting together chords and whatnot. I'd probably write totally cheezy music, but hey, it's music. :)

Ok, packing.
~Kristen