I Survived

I made it through the long night of storms.  National weather service confirmed that six tornadoes touched down in Mississippi last night.  I've read of five deaths, but none in Mississippi that I know of.  I shared a video on my Facebook page that someone took here in town.  Since it's a FB video, not a YouTube video, I can't share it here, but you can go look on my wall.  I've set the post to public, so you can see it even if you aren't in my friends list.

I got to work today, and that's all we were talking about for a while.  Lots of my coworkers said they had hail, and one coworker said she had all the windows in her house blown out.  The front office area of the plant had some water damage, but I don't know whether it was from broken windows or what.  One of my coworkers said the roof collapsed, but I can't confirm that.  I went up to HR for something, and we got to talking about that big storm that hit the plant back in 1999.  The HR person wasn't there back then, but I was.

I was at home, but since I lived within shouting distance of the plant at that time, I was right there in the thick of it.  The thing I remember was trying to open the door to get the dog (that would be Katie, for those of you who remember my dogs) inside, and the suction was so strong, I couldn't get the door open.  I said the dog would have to fend for herself.

She was fine, by the way, and lived for 10 more years.

I got to work the next morning, and the roof of the warehouse had been peeled back like a sardine can, and insulation was everywhere.  The wind hit so hard that the entire building was knocked askew.  Naturally, we didn't work that day.  They handed out the paychecks (it was a Friday), and sent everyone back home.  In the end, the plant was shut down for a week while they got a team of structural engineers to make sure the building wouldn't collapse on us.  I would have enjoyed that week a whole lot more if I'd known they were going to pay us for it.

Ah, good time, good times.

Speaking of work, my supervisor told me today, no more overtime.  It's going to be strange being able to sleep until 5:30 after getting up so early for so long.  Oh, it won't last long, though.  When we get back in January and begin ramping up production for peak season, they'll bring back the overtime.

Maybe then, I'll have something to talk about.