stories

1. The scene: 5:00 a.m., my apartment. The purply-gray dawn light is just starting to peek through my windowshades. I am asleep. My phone rings.

Me: (sleepily) Hello?
Drunk Guy: Hi.
M: Who is this?
DG: (challenging) Who is this?
M: Um, Angel.
DG: Where's Brie?
M: I think you have the wrong number.
DG: I don't think so.
M: (tired, getting grumpy and confused) I'm pretty sure you do.
DG: (angry) I'm pretty sure I don't.
M: ...
DG: You're just sitting there, staring at those thousands of gumballs...

At this point, I hang up.


2. Some bad weather rolled in this afternoon around three, and was still going when I left work around 5:30. I was driving home in the pouring rain, listening to a local radio station to see if there were any severe weather warnings out, since we've been getting threats of severe storms all day. Occasionally, I was seeing cloud-to-ground lightning strikes ahead of me to the east.

About half a mile from my apartment, I saw one solid strike and guessed by the time between the lightning and thunder that it was pretty close to where I lived. I eventually got to my building, ran inside (it was pouring rain), and went upstairs. After the requisite e-mail check and changing into non-work clothes, I happened to glance out the window.

It looked like a tree had exploded.

There are shards of wood littering the ground, and you can see the stump where it looks like it burst right out of the ground. Nothing else nearby appears to have been touched, nor does it seem like there was any fire (probably because everything is soaked through, since we've had several inches of rain today).

Pretty cool, huh?