Chinese Tornadoes

Today was a crazy day. This morning when we woke up, it looked like the sky was falling. There were these really low-hanging gray clouds that were moving at what looked like about 100 miles per hour. And the wind was blowing really hard. When we got home from school, however, it was nice and sunny outside--thought it was still windy. Last night's rainstorm had left us a little present: Lake de Campus Pointe in our backyard, shown here. This is the biggest that the lake has ever been. It almost looks big enough to swim in . . . or boat, or fish? This afternoon I did homework for a long time, then I fell asleep, then I woke up and did more homework. It was still sunny outside until about 5:00 when a few clouds blew in. When I talked with Mom on the phone at 6:00, however, things outside changed quite rapidly. Mom told me that there was a tornado warning in Charleston. I hadn't heard anything about it, but then I realized that I'd been so wrapped up in homework that I hadn't really been paying attention to anything else. So I turned on the Weather Channel, and there was the lovely warning beeping noise telling us that there was a tornado spotted near a little town to the southwest of Charleston. And the tornado was heading northeast! During the 20 minutes that I was on the phone with Mom, it went from gray to black outside. The second picture here was taken outside at 6:30--long before it usually gets dark, but it was pitch black. As you can see from the picture, it was a little nasty to the west of us. Aly and I were scheduled to meet Dan at the QQ Buffet to get Chinese food, but we were a little nervous to go outside. We figured, however, that the QQ Buffet was as good of a place as our apartment to be should the tornado come, so we headed over there. When we went outside, it was really hot and completely still and silent. That's almost worse than if it had been storming--it just felt like creepy tornado weather out there. Aly said, "I feel like I'm in the movie 'Twister.'" There was some crazy lightning in the sky, and there was this giant mass of blackness that looked like it was heading straight towards us. Thankfully, however, in the time that it took for us to order our Chinese food and leave the restaurant with it, we could see that the mass of blackness was heading to the north of us. There was still some crazy lightning, but the nasty stuff skirted around us. It was kind of creepy, though, how quickly it got so completely dark outside.

So we brought our Chinese food back here to the apartment and watched the Weather Channel while we ate it--endless excitement! Then Alisha called Aly and said she was bored, so she came over to watch "The Office" with us, which is hilarious. Then everyone wanted to watch a few episodes of "24," so we did that too. Alisha is really nice, but she is always, and I do mean always, talking about her boyfriend Matt (who none of us have ever met, so we wonder, does he really exist?). She talks about him constantly--during class, at meetings, while we're watching TV--all the time. Almost every comment that comes out of her mouth begins with, "My boyfriend Matt . . ." So, during "24," at a crucial and exciting moment, her phone rings, and she picks it up and says, "Hi Sweetie! Hey, can you guys pause it for a minute." Then she went outside and talked with him for about a half an hour. I'm a little irritable lately, and this irritated me. Plus, she was drinking all of my Diet Coke (which I only have to help me through class sometimes, but still--she was drinking all of it). Oh well, I think I just see waaaaaaay too much of all these people! I need to not be irritable though, so I'll work on it. The Chinese food we got was really good. I had egg fu yung.