The Professor and I went to visit his daughter and family in Connecticut. We had a wonderful time -- walked the Freedom Trail in downtown Boston, went to Cape Cod, checked out the Cliff Walk and some of the mansions in Newport RI, went to a beach somewhere in Rhode Island, and just generally enjoyed ourselves. The weather was, oh, maybe 25 or 30 degrees colder than it is here and the wind came directly from the North Pole and did not pass go or collect $200. So when we went to the beach, rather on the spur of the moment, we had to dig around in their car for warm outer garments. I thought we looked like Homeless Day at the Beach.

I was much too clever to let anyone take a full-length picture of me, as I wearing a jacket that came down to my knees. But they were laughing so hard at me that I had to get a self portrait. I thought I looked kinda cute in the fur-lined bomber helmet.

Note that I DID NOT take a full-length shot. I have some pride.

On Saturday afternoon I got a call from the teenager who was feeding the cats. She said the streets were flooded because we got ten inches of rain in two hours. She was saying something about a window that I never understood (because all teenagers seem to speaking Greek on the phone),but later Guppy called to tell me that 3 houses on my street had been hit by a tornado. I called our police department, where they would not verify addresses but said that all the damage was minor.

Either the tornado jumped over my house or the little bunker we turned it into was too strong because there was no structural damage. But my lawn swing and park bench, which survived hurricane Ike with no problem, looked like this:


One piece of that broken metal was stabbed into the earth deep enough that we will have to dig it out.

Of course, this tornado was inevitable. There are 8 or 10 families living in travel trailers in their front yards. You know how tornadoes always head for the trailer parks.