Tornado time

Last night lil’ ol’ Howard County was on tornado watch, and as the sky darkened and the rain lashed down, for a while it felt pretty hairy-scary.

It was a mild tornado, but there was still debris circling the air, and ginourmous rain puddles leaving the ground still sodden today.

Mr Dennis Davison of Woodbine, Howard County, got this wreckage as remnants of the tornado…..

That was his shed. And his car.

The Baltimore Sun had a little chat with Dennis, who in my opinion pretty much took it all in his stride.

Thankfully, when we heard that the tornado was on its way and that there might be power outage we ensured that the most important things were taken care of to make our lives as comfortable as possible.

Therefore, we took great pains to make sure that both laptops were fully charged so that we could indulge in the last episode of season 3 of Game of Thrones. (To be honest, it was the most disappointing episode to date, but that’s for another discussion….).

Hanging out at the Lakefront

The Lakefront in Columbia is fast becoming one of my favourite places to dawdle and mooch and drink strawberry and mint iced non-alcoholic cocktails. Oh yes, and meet people.

And today I spent my afternoon in the company of a delightful 72-year-old gentleman who regaled me stories of America-land and how it had changed in the past 50 decades. Amazing stuff….

And there just happened to be another political convention taking place, so up popped a dozen other people (amongst the gathering throngs) whose paths I have crossed since I have lived here, and all at once I felt like an outsider who had been accepted into a community.

Politics at the lakefront

This time it was Allan Kittleman doing his thing to become Howard County Chief Executive.

It felt uniquely American again; there was nothing British about it at all, but of course there wouldn’t be, because this is politics American style.

It interested me – his 21-year-old daughter spoke and was almost in tears talking about the time he drove four hours because she was a bit homesick at uni and needed some dinner. I’m thinking ‘that’s lovely’, but to be brutally honest, I’m also thinking ‘just Skype her and tell her to order a pizza.’ But the story was heartfelt (I know this because there were almost tears) and the crowd loved it.

The crowd also got to chant a response when asked ‘What time is it?’ All-but-one responded ‘Allan Kittleman time.’ That all-but-one was me, who shouted ‘Dinner time!’ because I thought we were playing What’s The Time Mr Wolf….

Anyway, politics in the USA is FASCINATING and I intend to see much, much more of it as the battle for 2014 unravels…. 🙂