Dry Slot

(Screenshot by the mighty MAC.)

7:30 p.m. yesterday (Saturday, July 25, 2009).
Pizza complete; in the oven, 15 minutes.
Now; take the dog for a walk or not?
I fire up my MyCast® weather-radar on my ‘pyooter.
Hellfire and damnation all around.
A giant thunderstorm has bombed nearby Brockport with hail.
A tornado has touched down in Corfu, which the TV-news keeps mispronouncing as “core-foo.” I think it’s “core-few.”
The National Weather Service has posted tornado warnings for Monroe County, and watches for all of Western NY.
The local TV-news has preempted everything; there is no national news.
“Yes mother” alerts!
“If you see a tornado, go down into your basement, and climb under a mattress.”
“Sure,” my wife says. “I’m gonna drag a mattress downstairs.”
“We have crews on the scene, and we’ll bring updates as we get them.”
Serious unsmiling face, but time for a commercial break.
It’s bespectacled graying Rick Dorschel (“Door-shull”) grinning at us. “The government wants your clunker!”
But my MyCast indicates a dry slot.
“But the sky to the north is black,” my wife says.
But MyCast says the storm is northwest of us, heading north-northeast.
It will miss us — already has.
Up the street we go, me and the pulling monster, our long hike around Michael Prouty Park.
To the north the sky is black, but to the west is the back end of the giant cumulonimbus heading north-northeast.
I round the town’s picnic pavilion, and suddenly BAM; — hang on for dear life.
That silly bunny-rabbit is scampering up someone’s lawn.
It’s a very tame bunny-rabbit; I think people are feeding it.
Don’t know as that rabbit is sufficiently aware a frenzied carnivore is hot to convert it to dead meat.
We have her leashed, but she’s a hunter.
Dark low-hanging clouds are scudding toward us.
I can see showers on the faraway horizon, and I hear distant rumblings of thunder.
I think I saw two flashes of lightning.
But we managed to get that walk in; which means we saw the bunny-rabbit.
Without getting drenched.
Thank goodness for MyCast®.

• The screenshot was taken after our walk, 8:45 p.m. But I Photoshopped a large red arrow on it to indicate storm direction.
• “Hufton” is Houghton College in western New York, from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. —It was often mispronounced; it’s “ho-tin,” as in “ho.”
• The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired almost four years ago. Best job I ever had.
• RE: “mighty MAC......” —All my siblings use Windows PCs, but I use an Apple MacIntosh (“MAC”), so I am therefore stupid and of-the-Devil.
• “Brockport” is a small college town west of Rochester. —“‘Port” in its name because it’s along the Erie Canal.
• “Monroe County” is the county Rochester is in.
• My wife of 41+ years is “Linda.”
• “Rick Dorschel” is a major car-dealer head honcho in the Rochester area.
• “Michael Prouty Park” is a town park near where we live. The land for it was donated by the Prouty family in honor of their deceased son (“Michael”) who used to play in that area. —It is mostly athletic fields, but has an open picnic pavilion. It’s maintained by the town. I walk our dog to and around it.
• Our current dog is “Scarlett;” a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s four, and is our sixth Irish-Setter.
• “‘Pyooter” is computer.