Misc.

Some musings and anecdotes from the past week:

-I recently learned that asking a farmer how large his farm is is like asking a woman how old she is. That's what a Tennessee farmer told me.

-I was standing next to a very large sheriff, all decked out in his black SWAT uniform with a gun and such...and then his phone rang. His ringtone? The theme from the TV show COPS! Only it didn't sound all cool, like an original recording as a ringtone. It was the synthesizer-cell-phone-sounding version. Yeah, real tough.

-I was finally spotted. I have other friends in my improv troupe who have been noticed on the street before because someone saw them in a show. That had never happened to me.....until my flight out of Baltimore early last Monday. The flight left at 6:50am, so I was tired and bedraggled looking, I'm sure. As I dozed off against the window before our flight even backed away from the gate, a woman touched my arm and said, "Excuse me...I'm sorry, do I know you?"

Me: "I don't think so."

Her: "You look really familiar. Do you do theater around Baltimore?"

And from there she figured out that she saw my troupe's New Year's Eve show. Then she gushed about it, which was cool. That's always better to hear than someone saying, "Yeah, I saw that, it sucked giant ass. I want my $10 back, jerk."

-After a long conversation with a woman in Rutherford, Tennessee, who had been thrown around inside her minivan with her three daughters by a tornado....and they walked away from the whole thing with only a few scratches, a funny thing happened. I was amazed by the story and it was on my mind as I left the church building and went back out to my car. When I turned the car on, the song "All I Need Is A Miracle" came on the radio right away. I found that interesting and oddly coincidental.

-I stepped outside a comfort zone with one disaster responder and was received very well. It made sense, though. I was watching him cut down this giant tree that was leaning precariously over a home. The tree had been shredded by a tornado and would fall down in the next big gust of wind, I'm sure. Anyway, this responder guy was in the tree with a chainsaw, and with a little help from a tractor, managed to get all the huge dangerous branches to fall not on the house but over in a clear section of the yard.

I was amazed, it was really cool and I hope I can be that crafty with a chainsaw sometime in my life. Anyway, I got back into his truck with him (he was giving me a tour of some areas) and said, "Bill, if I may use a swear word for a moment - that was totally bad-ass." I was worried he'd be offended, but also thought maybe he'd understand, too. I mean, the word "bad-ass" really was the only word that captured the awesomeness of what he had just done.

Fortunately for me, he cracked up with laughter and I think was even able to talk more openly with me after that point. Never doubt the positive power of an appropriately-placed swear word.

-Yesterday at a severe storms conference, I was sitting in a very large amphitheater listening to His Awesomeness Max Mayfield (director of the National Hurricane Center) speak. He spoke about last year's hurricane season, storm surges, destruction, hurricane prediction, this year's coming hurricane season and more. After his 45-minute talk, the moderator told the crowd we could break for five minutes. A guy sitting behind me goes, "Great, I really need to use the restroom."

When he returned, he sat back down with his friends behind me, laughed and said, "Man, glad I got to go then - talk about a storm surge!"