It’s finally here. For many of us–as in the entire state of Alabama including pets, barnyard animals, and infants—-the arrival of the first football game is what enables us to survive the depths of humidity hell. Football makes everything better. What am I looking forward to the most? 1. Tailgating food. This little …
I haven’t posted a church construction update in a while. To be perfectly honest, I haven’t driven by the site in months. I keep up with the progress through members’ facebook pages so I know progress is moving forward, but I just don’t want to see the area of reconstruction. It’s been 2 years since …
Two weeks ago, I thought all hope was lost. We had our first loss to Texas A&M and we fell to #5 in the BCS. We had 3 teams to get past in order to get that coveted 1 or 2 bid to the National Championship. The very next week, #1 and #2 Kansas St. …
Holiday traditions come and go, but this one is favorite. Our first 4 months of marriage included a terrorist attack (10 days after our wedding), a job loss (due to terrorist attack), loss of a car (it died), and serious flu/illness for me. By the time the holidays came around, we had very little extra …
One year after the storms destroyed our church building, we broke ground on our new one. Shovel-ready the way we do it in Alabama. . . immediately. This man deserves way more than he makes. Our mayor Walt Maddox. He was great before the storms. His leadership after the storms is nothing short of …
About 3 months ago, a girl in our morning CrossFit class mentioned she was working with the Junior League of Tuscaloosa on an upcoming event. She said it would be dragon boat racing. And I immediately thought of this. And this sounded like something I need to do once in my lifetime. Row a huge …
This one has nothing to do with running. Or food. Or being healthy. This is strictly life-casting. I’ve been stuck for the past few days on what to blog about and the only thing that has been on my mind in the past year and what our town has done to rebuild after last year’s …
It’s only a few weeks until we attempt the 13 mile hike up the face of Pike’s Peak in Colorado. After 3 years of driving or riding the Cog Railway to the summit, we’ve made a bet with the devil that we flatlanders can hike it like normal mountain people. All it takes is a …
Well, here we go again. Tomorrow is probably the biggest strongest risk of severe weather we’ve had in my neck of the woods since April 27th. See that orange purple spot in Central Alabama. Those aren’t happy colors. The STP is “significant tornado parameter”. It’s about 45% for my area. That means I have a …
A few weeks ago, my favorite weather man, James Spann asked for volunteers to sign up to be part of an audience at a town hall meeting. We will be asked a variety of questions and our responses will be used in future research studies. The event is centered around April 27th tornadoes and those …
It’s been almost 3 months since that horrible day in April. And in these past 3 months, a lot of good has been going on down here. People are still coming to The Slab of our church foundation to get meals and supplies, and we will be there until. Many people have used this tragedy …
It’s been almost 4 weeks since hell rained down on Tuscaloosa, and for 4 weeks, I’ve been stuck. It’s impossible to forget the things I saw in the first few days or the people’s faces I’ve seen in the past 4 weeks. I’ll never forget the sounds and smells. Or the devastation. Or how incredibly …
April 27th, 2011. Tuscaloosa, Alabama. It’s a day I will never forget. This will be the final post on the devastation. It’s time for me to move on and focus on the recovery and documenting that effort. It’s going to take all of us working together to rebuild our lives and our town. But we …
Technorati Tags: Tuscaloosa,tornado,disaster relief I finally made a video slideshow of what’s been going on, what I’ve seen, and what’s left of Tuscaloosa. Most of these are from 5 different areas of town. The tornado had maximum winds of 190mph. It left an 8 mile long track and was 1.5 miles wide. The church pictures …
Technorati Tags: Tuscaloosa,tornado,disaster relief I used to wonder if I was obsessed with food. After all, I think going to Publix is one of life’s greatest luxuries. I definitely eat with my eyes first and a good healthy grocery store is something that I have taken for granted since moving to Tuscaloosa. I read about …
Technorati Tags: Tuscaloosa,tornado,disaster relief It’s been over a week and things are still sad, still scary, still chaotic, but also still hopeful. I’m hanging on to the hope right now. The gym, preschool, educational building, and lower classrooms. Front entrance This was the first day after the tornado hit. We had a few boxes …
Yes, that is a roof….on the ground. Where is the rest of the house? About a half mile down the road. The owner sprayed that on the roof so the rescue workers could move on to other houses the might not have people who are OK. It has taken me a few days to even …
Some of you who are tweet friends know that I live in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I’m happy to say that my home was spared, but so many were not. We were without power for 5 days which seems like a minor blip on the radar of what my town is going through. I can’t even begin …
Living in the south, we know what April means. No, not tax day. Nor Opening Day for baseball (go BRAVES!!!), nor the first fishing trips in the warm weather. April means tornado season. For those of us in Mississippi and Alabama, we know the odds are stacked against us. Today started out a little different. …
School was dismissed early due to the threat of bad storms arriving during dismissal or worse…when buses are on their routes. We are a large spread out county and most high school bus routes are over 2 hours long. Since the timing looked bad, we left a couple of hours early. Everybody has their weather …