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I stumbled across this picture today, and even though it’s a year old, I thought it was good enough to post.

It might be time for me to bring the goatee back…

Praise 150: Doxology

This Sunday Night our Church will be hosting its second annual night of Praise and Worship. Last year’s event was wonderful, and this year’s promises to be even better, with all new music.

Rumor has it that a live CD may be cut from this year’s event, but you didn’t hear that from me…

Robert Garner, 35-year UA faculty member, dies at 71

Dr. Garner was the Associate Dean at the College of Arts and Sciences when I worked in the College of Arts and Sciences. He was a truly wonderful man to know and work for.

This week was supposed to have me staying at home, with Amanda going on her first real, relaxing vacation in almost 6 years. She and her Mom were going on a cruise up the Eastern seaboard to Canada.

However, Hurricane Ivan ruined that for them. Their flight to New York was cancelled due to the weather, and the only flight that they were able to get on put them in New York a few hours after their boat left. So they spent 2 nights in New York, did a little sight-seeing, and came back home.

The good news is that Diane did something absolutely brilliant that I probably would not have done… She purchased travel insurance. So after a little bit of complaining and threatening, they are booked on another cruise soon. Hopefully there won’t be any weather to spoil that one.

Hooray! The Cable TV (and, therefore, the cable modem) are back on!!!

We made it through the storm without any real problems. Our lights have stayed on, and the phones are still working. The only service that we lost was our Cable TV… and it went out about 7:00 AM, about 6 hours before the storm even hit… Go figure.

The best part of it, for me, was that I worked my first ever shift at the National Weather Service. I was one of the voices of K4NWS from 00:01- 06:00 Thursday morning.

I had no idea what all was going to happen, but ALERT paired me with a super HAM operator… WD4NYL, Mark Wells. Mark showed me how everything worked, and put up with some stupid questions from me for quite a while. Thanks, Mark!!

It was also interesting to see how the Meteorologists work… How they issue their watches and warnings; How they interact with other agencies; and what all goes on behind they scenes. They were also incredibly gracious and even thankful to have us there with them.

While we were there, the National Weather Service issued 8 tornado warnings, and we relayed storm reports from Montgomery to the Birmingham NWS. It was an incredible feeling to be able to help out in an event of this magnitude.

…the bread flies out of the store.

This picture was taken by a co-worker at a local grocery store this morning. Why does everyone want bread and milk when a storm comes in, regardless of whether its an ice storm or a hurricane?

Me, Mr. Weather Nut, is going crazy over the impending hurricane.

On oen hand, I’m really hoping that I’ll get a chance to work a shift or two at the NWS with our Alert group, or be able to get out and spot.

However, then I see a graph like this:

…And I realize that I may have hurricane force winds at my house. Then I’m not so excited about this whole thing.

Modern Pops - I have no idea what this is.

This morning, with Ivan bearing down upon us, I was looking (via Alta Vista) for the Scorpion’s song, “Rock You Like A Hurricane”. I found it online, or so I thought. This link has some songs on it, done with a orchestral flair, and each song is associated with a Peanuts character.

Strange. Apparetntly Franklin is the Metal fan, and Charlie Brown like show tunes.

It’s Soccer Time again!

The Cardinals had their first practice/game yesterday.