Three weeks is too long to be off from work. I am now used to a leisurely lifestyle which I cannot afford to maintain. Right now I am trying to remember why I love my work... I do, I know I do, it's just been so long that I can't remember why. Maybe it'll come back to me when I get there at 21:00, or maybe when everyone else is gone at 23:00... I hope so.

Tyler, in the meantime, is gone off somewhere. He is enjoying exploring the web. Like most kids his age, he is enamoured of music; he has discovered the vast resources out there. He did run off and leave me connected, though. I'm glad that I don't pay by the hour, but I still hate having the connection and not be using it. Bandwidth, y'know...

I need to do several things before I go in to work tonight. I need to give JD a call; his modem and sound card are on a single board, and he doesn't know that he can turn off the modem. Well, I don't know that for sure, either, but I hope that it can be done.

I need to do some laundry. I'm kinda late on this. I should've done this when I got back from Oklahoma. And I need to iron a lab coat. And I need to go to the store and get some bologna and cheese, so I'll have something to eat tonight.

Tyler just got back from playing frisbee golf. There is a course about three blocks from here, at Crestview park. His friend Ben, who is the nephew of Lisa Dunbar's fromer boy friend, is from Dallas, up here for the summer. Ben seems like a nice kid, a former doper who has seen the error of his ways. That's what Tyler tells me, anyway.

I'm having a hard time working myself up to be in a good mood to go into work. Normally, that's not a problem. Tonight it is...

I'm listening to Fresh Aire V, it should perk me up a bit.

We are also under some weather alerts... tornadoes north of here, and we're expecting golf-ball-sized hail in the area. Cool. I've mentioned before that I've never seen golf-ball-sized hail. Come to think of it, I'm not really sure that I want to right now...

Well, it looks like the severest weather is going to the east of us here... Lawrence and KC. Watch out, Shelly and Willa!

Tyler and Ben wanted me to tell them where to go in North Topeka to watch the storms... I dissuaded them, though, I think. The people around her panic so easily, I don't really want them out there driving around. It's really crazy, but when the sirens go off, people's sanity goes south. As does their common sense. It's not unusual to see people running red lights and doing seventy down residential streets (30 MPH, please) after the sirens start. You are in much greater danger from these maniacs that you ever would be from any silly tornado...

Used to be, when I was a kid, you were supposed to go the the north-east corner of your basement when a tornado was coming. With the topeka tornado of '66, they found that most of the debris piled up in the northeast corner. So now you're supposed to hide under a sturdy table in the basement. Which is what we did in the '66 one. At the present time, I don't have a sturdy table in the basement. I guess I need to build another one. I took my work-bench down when I moved my computer down there a year ago for a short period of time. I just haven't got it put back up yet. It's a solid two-inch door mounted on four-by-fours with two-by-six bracing. Very sturdy. Wouldn't do me a bit of good tonight, though...

Well, I must get busy and get stuff done. Next entry tomorrow morning, in the middle of the night... I'll be talking about plumbing. Sorry. That's what's on my mind right now, that might change during the night...