Posting here dwindles to a staggering halt again.

Come on guys, post something!

I was driving around Memphis today, 9 days after the monster storm, and there are still whole neighborhoods without electricity yet. Driving up one road, there was a coned off area taking up one lane, and half an electric pole, still attached to the cables, was suspended 3 feet above the road. That looked freaky. Another place, 5 miles west of that location, a beautiful million dollar house, had a tree embedded through the roof, and into most of the second floor - I wonder when they will get round to moving that one. Another wealthy home, 12 miles east of Memphis, has an entire grove of trees tangled up above their driveway - driving up there would be scary - my truck wouldn't fit, but I saw the owner, in S type Jag, drive under a tangle of fallen trees, held up only by cracked branches........ More money than brains I reckon.

So much damage in so little time - When it got to my house (38 miles east of Memphis) it took 5 minutes to shake to pass, shaking the house, rattling the trees and throwing debris all over - we didn't loose any trees, but plenty of leaf twigs. I can't tell if we lost any of the lower trees - they are to the east of the house, and it is summer - I stay out of that wood area, there are too many snakes in there. In winter it is not so bad, they all hide, so I can go count trees then.

I cannot get over the amount of damage - traffic lights are still out, powerlines are still torn apart all over, one block is powerless the next all the lights are on - weird. The amount of dead foliage on the road side looks worse than places hit by a tornado - I don't know the reported windspeed, but I reckon it was well over 100mph, from a storm travelling itself, at 65mph. Crazy storm, I do not want to see another one of them at all.

Theo

 

I guess it didn't hit Millington as hard. When I was there two days after, I really didn't notice any damage.

I've seen that kind of damage though. I was stationed in Charleston SC when Hurrican Hugo rolled over the city. I don't ever want to go through that again. That's the good thing about living inland. A hurricane has to go quite a ways to get to you.

*****

 

The only thing it done here was it was a heck of a light show & rained hard lights filckered once & never went off i was walking out the door to go to work when it came up & it started i walked back in the house & went back to bed fer another hour .




My bro-in-law drives a rollback wrecker & he was tyelling me he picked up a new 03 Cadillac Escalade out in GERMANTOWN that still had the drive out tag in the back glass come to find out the fella worked the 11 to 7 shift & got off work early @ 6 am he parked his new SUV OUTSIDE THE GARAGE NEXT TO A BIG BIG OAK TREE & IT FELL LONG WAYS (W/ the length of the SUV ) HE SAID IT WAS FLAT AS A PANCAKE IMAGINE THAT A VEHICLE & ITS ALREAY TOTALED & YA HADNT MADE THE 1ST PAYMENT YET I bet that fella was sick







Yall have a goodone

Bulldog

 

I drove through a section of Memphis behind the International Paper Towers today, and came across an area still without power, the lines still down, and a crew working hard to get it running.. Still plenty of side roads blocked by trees, and still trees sitting on top of houses - it is taking a long time to clean up this one.
Theo

 

Hey Bulldog - thanx for the word on Millingtown...

I just got in the door, and in two days I have to be out for another week. I was wondering for a minute there if I could even get through if I called home!

(My place is up in Drummonds, outside of Munford)

 

Hey, Wolf, good to see your paws at work in here.. How was the trip?

Theo

 

One thing is for sure - I got a load of negative stuff off of my back.

I always said I was a good tech, but a rotten manager. While we were out I arranged to be replaced as LPO of the shop, and the new guy is precisely what was needed to grab the ball and run with it! Now my efforts are directed more to the test equipment and systems that I needed to get right, and it's carving me a name and notoriety like I haven't seen in a long time...

Life is good!

I also found the time to study the German language program I picked up on impulse a while ago, which presents learning the language as a game. There are at least two people in the shop now becoming bilingual because it's fun, and that's really cool.

Icht bein fantastiche!

 

Now that is fascinating! I might have to try that with Spanish.

Glad that things are going your way.

 

Details, Wolf, Details.. I need to learn more about everything.. I am now body building, which has opened up areas of my brain I thought had died.

Theo

 

It was a program I found in a discount bin at Comp USA.

It was by EuroTalk, and there may be a newer version of it out now.

If there is - I'm going to get a copy.

Spanish is a key language, by the way. If you have spanish - you can be understood in France and many other countries.
(Not to mention Southern California)

It's a very positive way to learn a language. Instead of it being a chore (and what is worse - a graded one) it's an entertaining way to pick it up. It also allows me to hear the proper pronunciation of the words, so the spelling can't throw me off so that I sound hilarious later on...

 

I think I will look for French and Spanish. That will just about satisfy my new lust for information.

Theo

 

The Navy sent me to school for Flemish/Dutch just before I went on an exchange tour with the Belgian Navy. I'm fluent but don't get much practice . I can also halfway understand German providing they aren't talking too fast and took a couple of semesters of Spanish in college that didn't stick very well.
I'm going to have to look for that German language program. A couple of other languages that I'd like to learn would be Gaelic and Hebrew.

*****

 

If I could spell Gaelic, I would write some for you. My family is from the Highlands of Scotland, (my home before emigrating to Aus) and we all spoke gaelic as a first language, but I left before I learned how to spell..

Hebrew is useful, I can read it pretty well, but speaking it is a different matter - I learned it at college, (for Theology) and never got round to ever speaking it.

Theo

 

If I ever expect to progress in German - I now need another program that details spelling and so on.

There was a reason for the discount on the one I found at Comp USA, it was a limited version (Ouch!)

Just enough to peek around the door, in a manner of speaking.

I learned more of the language in two weeks than I have in a lifetime so far - now I want the rest of it...

 

I'm back!!! Mrs ***** spent most of the month in the hospital over at Dyersburg and we finally got to come home yesterday. She's still down but getting better.

*****