Apocalypse now

We had a pretty ridiculous storm here on Monday night. It had rained in the morning, so I took my umbrella into work (fortunately). When I left the office around 7, it wasn't raining, though things seemed a little ominous. By the time I got off the train, around 8, it had started to pour. I got into the car and started to drive towards Alma's house, thinking she was home, but I called her from the car and left a message saying that it was raining, but wasn't too bad at the moment, if she still needed to drive back down from school (which turned out to be the case).

Then I got about a mile from her house and things went crazy. The rain started coming down so heavily that I couldn't see ten feet in front of the car except for other car and building lights. I managed to get to Alma's driveway, where I called her apartment and told her not to drive back down if she hadn't left. It turns out that up at the school, it was barely doing anything! Meanwhile, lightning was striking within blocks of me; the sky was flashing constantly. I've never seen anything like it. It's what I imagine being in the middle of a military battle would look like. I turned on WGN to see what was happening with the Cubs game and there were tornado sirens going off at Wrigley. I'm not sure I can recall ever seeing a storm of comparable intensity.

Within an hour things had tapered off, but at around 11, it started up again, though by this time I was home in bed, trying to rest up for a doctor's appointment the next morning. Of course it turned out that the office lost power due to the storm, which I didn't find out until I got there at 8:30 am.

Probably not a very exciting post, in retrospect. So here's interesting news: there's a good chance I will be going to the Philippines with Alma and her family in late December/early January. It's not a cheap flight, but (even with a girlfriend of Filipino descent) how often do you get a chance to take a trip like that, especially when you wouldn't have to pay for hotels? Plus Asia is the last continent I've never been to, and with stopovers this would be a chance to add several countries to my list, aside from the fact that two weeks in the Philippines, especially in the middle of winter, would probably be crazy awesome.