Termites From Formosa

This is me hanging out of the window to my second floor guest bedroom behind my townhouse, snapping a shot of my neighbor Brenda's backyard, post-storm bruhaha. I spoke with her today, telling her that I'm glad it was just her gazebo top that came uprooted (and tried to scale our shared fence) and not her enormous trampoline, also in her backyard. And she explained that her trampoline had actually lifted straight up off the ground, crashing over the back of that wooden fence, some of which got knocked over in the process.

And you see those tall iron gate posts immediately behind us? That's our community swimming pool, and she told me that the trampoline sailed right over that iron gating, over the pool, and landed in the trees on the other side. Amazing. She said it took her, her husband, and her son to carry that thing into the back yard when they bought it, and that one 30-minute storm yesterday lifted it like a dried leaf and set it adrift across a swimming pool and into those trees in the far distance. "No more trampolines for us" she said. If the wind had gone the other way that thing would have come crashing through her glass french doors. Or heck, even mine. Yikers.

A field claims rep from my homeowners insurance company just came by to take pics of the outside, as well as in my bedroom where water stains are beginning to appear in my ceiling, since my bedroom is directly beneath the attic where the siding tore free. She says she doesn't think it should be too expensive, although I already have a $1,000 deductible so either way I'm pretty sure this is all coming out of my pocket. All I'm concerned about is my bedroom ceiling not caving in again, like it did at my old residence a few years ago after a Nor'easter took shingles off my roof and flooded the space over my apartment. I was renting back then so it was all taken care of. But I'm a flippin' homeowner now. Oy vey. The things we gotta do to keep a roof over our music collection.

I was a bit weathered myself so I headed down to work to buy this used copy of The Residents The River Of Crime CD which came in last week but I've been holding onto it for when we have another 40% off used deal, but after the last 48 hours I seriously needed some instant gratification. The River Of Crime is a collection of 20 character-driven podcasts of a film noir style true crime 1940's radio show tribute of sorts, and I always meant to keep up with them but never did, despite my well-known love of all things Residents (guess I need to let Randy borrow this too). One of the girls at work told me that it was insane at the store during the storm, where the entire staff was trying to hold the giant glass doors shut from the wind, and they kept getting pushed backwards from the force of the gusts.

The road down Princess Anne through Kempsville was a disaster in many spots. The claims rep told me that she was surveying all about Kempsville today and she thinks no other area besides mine was hit as hard, and she wouldn't doubt that a tornado had whipped through without our knowledge. Nevertheless, I picked up Issue #3 of Terry Moore's new comic Echo while I was out there (at least Trilogy is still standing, although by nearly noon they hadn't even had a chance to put out the new comics yet, and I had to get Jerry to go dig it out of the stock box for me).

So is anybody else out there keeping up with Echo? I mean besides Al and me? It's Moore's first original story since he finished Strangers In Paradise, and so far appears to focus on a young woman named Julie who wound up accidentally too close for comfort during a secret nuclear experiment in the Arizona desert and is suddenly growing a mysterious metallic breast plate that shocks some people when they touch it, and others that don't. Anyway, nice to see Terry back doing his own thing again. He can be both so gosh darn frustrating sometimes, but still a wonderful weaver of character-heavy storylines. Especially about women. Which is what I seem to be gravitating towards a lot more these days than usual.

Anyway, drop me a line sometime, iffin' ya'll wanna discuss amongst ourselves.

Christ. I hear more thunder.