Rice tornado

My wife and I were driving south from Dallas Sunday on I-45. About 10 miles south of Ennis and 10 miles north of Corsicana (home) we came to the town of Rice. All of a sudden the tail lights in front of me came on -- I thought, "Morons, what are you people doing now?
Then I looked up and saw the tornado on the west side of the highway. All of us started pulling over to the side of the road. My wife grabbed our little camera and I started firing shots. I'd guess we were less than a mile from the thing - not sure, didn't get out and measure it.
Attached are photos of course. The thing hit the Rice School - really missed up their stadium and brand new middle school - it was only 3 or so months old. I think it is completely wasted. Some photos show the school.> > If you can look behind the school you will see 4 train cars over - they were yellow auto transports I think. Think tornado took out 5 houses and the school. A big semi carrying an enormous 4 wheel dump truck thing was flipped over on top of a car. That driver was able to crawl out his window.
Yes, it was quite an experience. I have never been so close to a tornado and arrived at the destruction so fast. The county storm chasers were right there and made video which you can see on WFAA or other places. The video is on AOL too.
I am going to try to post my 21 photos with this tonight.
Mtz

late Oct. stone

I will attempt to keep this short.
too late.

1. Took wife to town this afternoon - Walmart - HEB - Y'Know. She could have taken herself, but we will picking up dogs at the boarder.
2. Stopped at the mail boxes up the hill. On the ground was this nice looking ball point pen. It wasn't a Parker but it had that big grip look to it. My wife likes the pens with the larger bottoms.
What's the first thing you do when you pick up a pen off the floor or the street? Maybe you never pick up anything. I do. I love to find a Penny now and then. The first thing I do is to click it and see if it works. No workee?? Then, back on the ground it goes.
So, I clicked it a bit, and it - it - it - bit me. Shocked me!! It was just a small bit of a buzz. It wasn't a pen at all. It was a joke - a shocker. I would have loved to have one of these when I was in junior high. I gots our mail and returned to the car, telling the wife about the pen. I had her try it; but, it shocked her all the way up her arm. It actually did bite her. On me, it was just a slight buzz.
I took the pen apart tonight and found 4 of the little batteries. I can hardly wait to show people at Christmas. I feel bad that it shocked BJ so much. She was not pleased.

3. Later we went to the courthouse and voted - 1st day of early voting. All of you Democrats better vote if you plan to cancel our votes out. We used a touch screen voting machine. Really interesting how things have evolved in the voting booth. The lady said they had 200 voters this morning from 8 till 10.
4. Our last adventure was to pick up the dogs at the boarders. We found a Vet who only charges $7 per dog per night. Amazing. There are 3 Vets working this clinic- all with the same last name IVIE. ONE was Bo Ivie. about 6 ft tall, long stringy hair - beard - country. You'd never guess he was a Vet or anything other than a bum off the street. Their whole crowd was busy and overly friendly. I was impressed.
They referred to our 5 dogs as "The Herd." They were happy to get home and have slept almost continuously except, of course, Oscar who wanted to play ball for a couple of hours.

5. The dogs were in jail because wife Brenda had a family reunion of a sort - it was a reunion of the cousins in her family. They chose Granbury - nice tourist trap - and so forth. They spent many an hour in the lobby watching football or talking about the good ole days and other relatives. The one thing we did that was a bit excessive had to do with eating. Expensive restaurants were chosen. The food was good - but a bit pricey for me. Taco Bell would have been just fine with me.
I would suggest that all groups of cousins (or families) plan get togethers over time. All of us are aging - you add the rest.

6. One last thing: We took the motorhome to Granbury. It is so much cheaper for sleeping than espensive hotels. We had received a recall on it last week. The MH is on a Workhorse chassis -- I think Workhorse is somehow related to General Motors cause Chevy places are available for fixes.
So the recall had something to do with brakes. All went fine until we almost arrived. i felt this bump in the steering wheel - it seemed to go away. but when we stopped a Granbury, you could smell hot rubber outside the home. I fretted all weekend but started for home anyway, stopping to smell at times. No smell.
Re-read the recall, seems brakes will stick & new parts are in order. I called the proper repair place LynnSomebody chevy house in Alvarado. The lady said she had 8 pages of people in line & they would call me when it was my turn -- probably sometime in December. She told me to just go ahead and drive it - pay attention if it seems to have a braking problem.

December. it's just brakes. What if it were something important, like turn signals? or ash trays?

enough for the night -- see ya
mtz