Mother Nature Says No to Home Show

The home show was going very well, good attendance, even in this economy. Had some interest in the business. The booth was in good shape. Jess and I took a break to look at the other booths and sample dips and cheese balls.

The show ran until seven last night, so I came home late afternoon to make some tacos. Hubby and Jess came home, we ate supper and were watching the television when Rick Mitchell came on to say that we had some nasty weather heading our way. Hubby got three motorcycle helmets and we went into our laundry room, because it's at the center of the house away from windows. The tornado sirens went off five or six times and we listened to storms hit and then fade away. Finally, they told us we could come out of our hidey holes.

Shortly afterward, they started showing pictures on the television about the tornadoes that had hit north Enid, which is where we live. In fact, the Expo Center, where the home show was being held (two miles east of our house), took a direct hit. Obviously, the home show was cancelled for today. We went over a couple of hours ago to see what was left of our booth, if anything.



This is the main part of the building. Our booth, however, was way down at the other end, near that awning on the right side of this photo.



This was a utility pole out by the street.



This is what we saw when we went in to see if any of our stuff was salvageable. This had been the booth behind ours. One of the back doors had been blown off, so everything in that buiding got tossed around for awhile.



This was taken from where our booth had been. Some of our pamphlets are over there, the blue ones. Oh, and that pink bowl was one of the ones we had candy in on our table.



Jessica had taken the balloons and put them in her car last night, I'm not sure why. We had a couple of boxes of pamphlets and flyers, some candy, a few snacks, a pot of flowers, and our banner. They were all there, still intact. All in all, we got lucky. But our booth doesn't much resemble the photo from the last post.



And that's how we do an Oklahoma home show!

Weekend Warriors

Our town is holding its semi-annual home show this weekend and hubby decided it would be fun to rent a booth. He's going to be promoting his engineering and business consulting, and plant design. Jessica will be drumming up business for her web design division of the company. I'm going to be the one who runs out for food or a pot of flowers because the table is 'not colorful enough' or whatever else needs to be done.

The show goes five hours this afternoon and evening, ten tomorrow and six on Sunday. Not your typical weekend, but it will probably be an interesting one!



If we weren't doing this, I would probably be in St. Cloud, Minnesota for Jeff's CD release party. Congratulations and have fun, Jeff!

I Think That I Shall Never See a Thing as Heavy as a Tree

When we lived in Minnesota, our next door neighbors were Bill and Lois. They are still some of our dearest friends. Bill is really smart and very kind. He is also a character. One day, he decided he was going to cut down the tree at the corner of his house. He had it rigged so that it would fall out into his back yard, missing his garden, the garage, and all the other trees around. It was a good plan. But you know what they say about the best laid plans.

I had just come home with the kids. We came out of the garage and started up the driveway and then stopped because Bill was taking a chain saw to a tree. We knew something exciting was about to happen. And it did. The tree fell, but instead of taking the preferred path down, it came out at an angle from the house, in a direct line with where my son, who was seven, was standing. I was not concerned, because I knew the tree was not tall enough to make it to the driveway, but he didn't. The tree fell, taking out their clothesline and ours, the ground shook, and Curtis burst into tears. Lois came out of the house and yelled at Bill for upsetting Curtis. Bill got his chain saw, cut up the tree, and righted the clotheslines.



So you can imagine my interest yesterday when hubby came home from Saturday breakfast with the boys to tell me that they were going over to one of the guys' house to cut down a tree. Where's my camera? Bill, you may want to take notes.

Lots of ropes controlling the path of the limbs.



The first of two big limbs coming down, spewing smaller limbs everywhere.



Now that the second big limb is down, it's a matter of cutting it up and cutting the trunk down to a stump. When that was done, they loaded it onto a trailer using a crane. Then they hauled it to the dump, where it weighed in at 1540 pounds.



I'm just glad no clotheslines were harmed in the cutting down of this tree.