so we all left our cubes, went down the stairs, and into the basement. for the next 20-30 minutes. this is when we realized the basement is not well ventilated. sure, i thought...we'll survive the tornado and then suffocate before we can get out of the building. when we were finally permitted to leave the basement, we were all pretty sweaty. ugh.

i gathered up my stuff and left shortly after that. for one, my concentration was shot. by the time i could've gotten back into what i was working on, it'd be time to go. second, i really feared for my house. even though there hadn't been an actual tornado, the thunderstorm and winds were VERY strong. there are a lot of large trees around it, and i hoped like hell none of them came down.

on the way home, i saw a lot of downed trees, branches, leaves everywhere. most of the stoplights were working by that time, fortunately. i saw some car accidents, either from hydroplaning, wind, or from being in the intersection when the lights went out. the lights closest to my home were out. crap.

the big trees out front were mostly whole, only a couple smaller branches came down. the back yard, though...one of the neighbors' trees split. one big branch (about 1/4 of the tree) is straddling my fence, half on the neighbor's garage, and half on my lawn. it hit my garage on the way down, but only with little branches. the bulk of it missed the building, and the garage is undamaged as far as we can see. unfortunately, another (large!!) branch is way lower than it should be, and is brushing the top of my garage. it looks like another storm could bring it down, and we're expecting one in an hour or two. we turned off the power to the garage, and moved as much as we could away from that side.

our power was out until around 9:30 at night. i arranged a bunch of candles, enough to see by, and read for awhile. some areas of town are still out, i think.

our basement also got wet. again. damnit.

in addition to all that crap yesterday, i had a terrible day at work today. by about noon all i wanted to do was go to bed and pull the covers over my head. i still want to...but i have things to do. we have to figure out who owns the house next door (rental) and see what they want to do about their tree. we can probably take care of the chunk on the ground on our side, but I don't know whose responsibility it is to cut down the branch threatening to smush our garage. legally i think we can do it, but i don't think i want to do something like that myself when there's a power line running through the tree. i don't know if we can require the owner to take it off, but i don't want to do it, especially when we'd probably have to pay to have it done. i also think that the whole tree may have to come down, which would be a shame because it was a gorgeous tree. i just think it's probably a danger to my property, unless that branch springs back up when the other one is taken out.

today is a day where i just wish i didn't have this to deal with on top of everything else.