I Took a Whole Lot of Pictures

I went out and took a whole lot of pictures of the property, then we went on vacation.

To Origins, the big gamers' convention down in Columbus, Ohio.

We stayed in the lodging at the Defense Supply Center, and the second night (Wednesday night) were woken up at a quarter to midnight by civil defense sirens and the emergency public address system shouting "Your attention please! There is a tornado warning in effect! Please report to the emergency shelter areas IMMEDIATELY!"

This was doubly upsetting, as we had no idea where the emergency shelter areas were.

Eventually we got through to the switchboard and were told what building to go to, and when we went outdoors, one of the base police drove us over and buzzed us inside. So. There we were, woken up in the middle of the night, looking rather like refugees, in a big quiet government building, along with the guys coming off the night shift who were trying to decide whether to race the storm home or wait in the building.

(That's one thing about tornadoes: they do a heck of a lot of damage, but they do it fast.)

Columbus Dispatch news story > here < -- if it eventually vanishes, somebody leave me a comment & I'll delete the link.

The storm came roaring through, and outside the glass doors of the lobby, all I could see was rain fire-hosing sideways past the windows. Wow.

When the all-clear finally sounded, we got a ride back in the still-pouring rain and went back to bed in the wee small hours of Thursday morning and tried to fall back to sleep.

This is an Origins that we're going to remember for a while!

More later.

Meanwhile the dogs are waiting for me to come get them at the kennel.