Weather: July Daily Weather,Part II Have some lemonade!, 1 by Marylyn_TX

Marylyn_TX wrote:
Sharon, thanks for the link. How did the meeting go with the doctors? And how is Gary feeling today?

Marilyn, that rose is beautiful!!

Celia, Monty is a gorgeous cat. Our silly boys haven't "helped" with the files yet... One of them LOVES ripping holes in the bags that hold our packing peanuts, though, and makes a huge mess. We don't want them to swallow the styrofoam, so we keep cleaning it up over and over and over... We've moved the bags out of his reach (or so we thought!), but the silly cat actually moves them back to a more convenient spot for himself. They're going out to the garage tonight!

Sharon, I have no idea what that is, but it's beautiful! The flower heads are kinda like my clerodendrum bungei, but the color is wrong. (http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/1253/) Maybe yours is something else in the clerodendrum/verbena/lantana family? (I'm probably completely wrong, though.... )

I'm glad you're finally getting regular rain, Deb!!

I'm pooped... This has been a crazy week at our church! We have Vacation Bible School next week, so I've been helping make the scenery for the different rooms. I don't do the fancy painting, or anything that actually needs an artistic eye.. I stank at art in school! Mostly I've been wielding a staple gun. LOL Our curriculum has a beach theme, so I've been stapling some really cool reed fencing stuff to wood frames to make some "beach huts". I need to ask the lady who came up with all of these cool ideas where she got the fencing.

Last Wednesday we had a huge storm come though, and the gutters at church backed up and dumped hundreds of gallons of water into the offices and down the walls into the nursery area. Yikes! Several of the office computers are toast, and lots of wallboard and carpets, and ceiling tiles needs to be replaced. On Thursday morning, when I arrived to start helping with the VBS scenery, there were 3 truck-load of people from a flood/mold remediation place, cleaning up the water, ripping off the ... umm.. that plastic edging stuff that goes along the wall at foot level... what's it called??... and drilling holes in the wallboard to let the water out, and setting up tons of hugs fans and dehumidifiers. What a mess... I was at church again Saturday morning helping clean and sanitize the toys in the preschool rooms so they could be used on Sunday. After church Sunday, all of the shelves of toys got pushed to the middle of the rooms and covered with plastic sheets so they wouldn't get dirty again when the crew comes in this week to replace the wallboard and insulation from the walls that got wet. Our building is only a year old... It turns out the gutters were designed wrong. :-( Our insurance is going to cover some of the cost of all fo the repairs, but there is a $72,000 deductible. OUCH! The good part of it all, is that it happened during the day while people were there. One of the pastors went up on the roof (while it was still storming!) and somehow cleaned out the gutters or pulled them away from the wall... I'm not sure exactly what he did, but the "experts" who came in the next day said that if that storm had happened at night, or if Mike hadn't done his magic, the church probably would have had 2 feet of water throughout the entire building, instead of "just" a couple of inches in the office/nursery wing, the next morning, and the damage would have been much much much worse. I expect they're also going to be re-designing the gutter system!

Today I was back at church, finishing up the "beach huts." I didn't do the last panels quite right, so if I get there in time tomorrow, I'm hoping to redo them... The bunnies have a great time playing while I'm there, so this has been fun for all of us. :-) Right now they're in the bathtub, and then I expect they'll sleep VERY well tonight. LOL They spent a lot of time running up and down the stairs with some other kids today, and have definitely gotten their exercise in. We have a little playground at church, but it was pretty hot, so they didn't stay out in it very long. I'm hoping tomorrow they will be able to ride the church's trikes and scooters in the gym. Today some of the "set designers" were building a paper mache volcano in there, so the bunnies had to stay out of the way. :-)

Well... now that I've written a book, I need to get some stuff done around here. I'm a little stiff from kneeling and stapling all day, but I need to do the dishes and clean out the kitty boxes (ugh) and do some laundry, since I'm expecting to be gone most of the day again tomorrow... I'll talk to you all soon!

Oh, weather stuff, right... Things are heating in the Atlantic and the Gulf... Bertha is a tropical storm again right now, but they're expecting her to turn back into a hurricane soon. It looks like she's going to head out into the Atlantic (when she gets done turning in circles just east of Bermuda... the folks there are going to be glad when she moves along!), so keep an eye out, Rann. I don't know if she is going to go far enough north to cause trouble for you or not. There are two other "tropical waves" in the Atlantic, too, that the people at NOAA are keeping close eyes on. Keep emptying your ice trays into the oceans, everyone!!



This message was edited Jul 14, 2008 9:09 PM