The storms that rolled through on Monday night didn't cause any damage by me, but less than 10 miles to my east, they sure picked up steam. When I drove into work on Tuesday morning, NWA had about half a dozen trees down and some big branches as well. That was my first intimation of how severe the weather was.
Then that afternoon, one of my tech writers was telling me the storm woke him and his wife up. They saw the large tree in their backyard at a 45 degree angle and headed for the basement. Wow. Last night, the news was full of damage reports from the Twin Cities. The weather guy said the straight-line winds were around 71 mph when they went through. Double wow. Since I fell right back asleep after noting the storm, I'm glad it wasn't severe like that in my area. Yikes!
Before I went to bed last night, I turned on the Weather Channel. I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to have another middle of the night wake up call.
It's really odd. We were in a draught for most of the summer. People kept walking around saying, "when are we going to get some rain?" Now we're walking around going, "I can't believe we got another storm." Rain totals for August are 9.29". The all-time record for the month is 9.31" and average is 4.something".
Enough about weather, right?
I stop by my parents' house almost every day to see them, check in on them, etc. I usually stay about an hour or so and then go home to write. Last night, my mom asked me if I had time to give her my opinion on what she wanted to wear to the wedding and rehearsal dinner this weekend. I knew this wasn't going to be quick and I was right.
Picking out the outfit for the wedding actually ended up being pretty easy. Time consuming, though, because my mom has slowed down so much in the last six months. If only it had been that easy with the rehearsal dinner choice.
She comes out in this awful dress. Now I'm not exactly a fashion maven, but I took one look and said, "no." That wasn't good enough. I had to zip up the back all the way because clearly that was the only reason the dress was hideous. NOT! It didn't look any better zipped. Talk about a Glamour Don't! I told her so and she argued with me.
First of all, it was far too big for her, especially on top. Secondly, it was too long, almost coming down to the floor. If it had been a straighter cut on the skirt, it might not have been a problem, but it wasn't and it just looked wrong with that style.
The worst problem, however, was how ugly the pattern on the dress was. It looked as if she'd stolen someone's brocade drapes and had them made into a dress. I told her it was like the Carol Burnett take off on Gone With the Wind. Mom didn't find that funny.
She went and asked my dad for a second opinion--I guess she really wanted to wear this dress because she kept saying, but I like it. My dad told her it was too big, too. She argued a bit longer before conceding.
Rehearsal dinner outfit two was better, but it was slacks and a matching blouse with a pattern on it. It was far too much pattern. She gave up this argument faster. I told her to wear wedding outfit 1 as the rehearsal dinner outfit, but she didn't want to do that. Sigh. She said she's going to keep looking, which will probably mean more fashion shows for me. I ended up spending two hours over at the house and didn't get the amount of work done on the synopsis that I was hoping for. Sigh.
As I was winding down for the night, I found a show on E! called Crimes of Fashion. It was about celebrity Glamour Don'ts. Definitely ironic timing.
