after the storm continues

In just a few minutes I'm going to go back to After the Storm. I'm sitting in a comfy chair at our local Panera Bread (free WiFi!!!) with my laptop, waiting for 7 p.m. so I can pick Rhea up from the airport. Lucky thing. I'd do anything to be on a plane right now. Well.. almost anything...

We had a meeting today. A volunteer is coming to work with us for a year, to develop and teach nutrition and fitness to the kids in our programs. The meeting was about her and the other volunteers. I got the best assignment - I get to show them around town their first day here! We'll go the the other agencies where the volunteers will be working and then we will go to ours. Then I have a whole day to give them a tour of Mobile. I always love showing people around, because it's like seeing through their eyes. It's so much fun to be a tourist in your own town. So I'm going to make it the best tour ever! I was thinking about putting together a little "survival package" and leaving it with them. I'd include road maps, brochures to the many cultural events and locations, and of course, some Mardi Gras stuff... beads, moon pies, coins and other assorted goodies. You can't call yourself a Mobilian if you don't own at least one strand of cheap plastic beads! There will be three of them, so it won't be too difficult to come up with enough goodies for all. And we have several year-round Mardi Gras stores. Yes, we here in Mobile are obsessed with Mardi Gras. We take it very seriously! In fact, this year my boss and I were in Washington, DC for a conference on Fat Tuesday, so we brought beads to all the people we visited that day. We went to several political offices, all of representatives in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, so we brought beads to their staff members, saying that we brought Mardi Gras up to DC with us. It was fun.

But I got off topic for a minute... I do that pretty often, so it won't be a surprise to anyone!

Oh, I do want to share this one story before I start writing... I almost died just now. I was driving down Airport Blvd, the street with the most awful traffic in all of Mobile, and an ambulance beside me burst into flames! It just started smoking and fire was shooting out from underneath it. They stopped moving and turned on their lights and siren. Everyone started going around them, and as I passed by, I saw the two guys who were riding in the front out on the street inspecting the damage. It was still on fire at this point. Not I can look across the street and see fire trucks and police. They're blocking the road so nobody can drive too close to the ambulance, but the fire seems to have gone out... which is good. So that's my scary experience of the day. I can go a good long while before having another like it. I mean, I like excitement but that's the kind that can turn into tragedy very quickly. And besides, it touched on one of my greatest fears, my vehicle bursting into flames with me in it. I'm convinced I will die that way, so everytime I think about it, I get this odd sort of chill. I don't know why I think I'm going to die that way, it's just a feeling I have. I know... it's strange. (I never said I was normal!)

Okay, so it's time to start working on After the Storm. I have a good two hours before I have to leave for the airport. Let's see how much I can get done by then...