May 24 Anticipating Texas Tornado Thunderstorms Washington Hooters & Kirstie Alley Winning Dancing With The Stars

I'm up early on this 24th day of May, with only one week to go in the month, looking through the bars of my patio prison cell at the glowing cauldron of doom I call a hot tub.

According to the National Weather Service the conditions will be that today's storming could produce tornadoes.

The NWS says, "There's a 60 percent chance of thunderstorms this afternoon. Some of today's storms could be severe as a strong upper-level disturbance comes into the area. The greatest threat will be hail, but the system could also spawn strong winds and tornadoes."

Something in the air is making my eyes slightly burn and water. I would have thought that yesterday's heavy duty storming, with almost 2 inches of rain, would have cleaned up the polluted local air, temporarily.

I was up unusually late last night, I think I was overstimulated by watching Kirstie Alley doing gymnastic routines, straining partner Maks's musculature to the limit, during her freestyle routine on last night's Dancing with the Stars finale.

My first couple hours of trying to sleep last night were interrupted by an amazing series of surreal nightmares. All I remember was waking up startled, over and over again.

Total change of subject from my nightmares to Hooters.

Before I moved to Texas I did not know that Hooters was an actual place with beer, hot wings and girls in hot pants. I thought Hooters was just a joke place that Al Bundy liked on Married With Children.

Well, imagine my surprise, this morning, when reading the Seattle P-I to learn that Washington spawned Hooters at some point in time after I moved to Texas. Apparently the Hooters have not done well in Washington. They have been closing without warning. Washington is now down to only 2 Hooters remaining. To get a Hooters hot wing, and view hot pants, you now have to go to Tacoma or Spokane.

I have yet to have been in a Hooters. I recollect the strip joint connoisseur, who calls himself Gar the Texan, wanting me to go to Hooters with him. I declined. The association in my mind with Al Bundy was just too strong. I'd not thought of it before, but Gar the Texan is very much like Al Bundy. Except for not being a shoe salesman or having a receding hairline.

Time to go swimming now before the incoming electric apocalypse.

10 Years Since Killer Tornado Hits Fort Worth & Seattle's Kingdome Implodes

It's is being a bit difficult for me to believe it has been 10 years ago this very day of March 28, that I had my first up close experience with a tornado.

I did not actually see the tornado. I did see the huge greenish gray storm wall that contained the tornado.

If I remember right there were several tornadoes touching down during that storm, with the worst being one that start ripping its way across the west side of the Trinity River on its way to doing a lot of damage to downtown Fort Worth.

It took awhile for some of the damage to be repaired, the most notorious being the Bank One skyscraper. It is now a nice looking residential tower, but for a lot of years it was a covered with plywood eyesore.

The tornado damage sort of turned into an urban renewal project. The replacement for the destroyed Cash America building is a much better looking structure. Where a church once stood a Pier One Imports Headquarters was built. A very nice looking piece of architecture that Pier One could not afford, so it now is the base from which Chesapeake Energy runs Fort Worth.

The Montgomery Wards building took quite a hit. The store closed and the building was renovated with that area of Fort Worth, now, possibly, the most thriving property in town.

The day after the tornado struck downtown Fort Worth, the downtown was closed. But, I was able to ride my bike into the damaged area. I'd really never seen anything like this before. I took pictures and webpaged what I saw.

About 5 years later I was to see something that instantly brought the Fort Worth tornado damage to mind, that being the bizarre sight of all those homes and apartments destroyed in Arlington by the Jerry Jones Eminent Domain Abuse Tornado.

I did not realize til reading it this morning that the Implosion of the Kingdome also occurred 10 years ago, March 26, 2000. I got to watch that implosion, but I don't remember how, it must have been live on CNN. I remember being on the phone with my sisters who were watching it live from my little sister's office in a downtown Seattle skyscraper. Elliot Bay was filled with people on boats.

Ten years goes by awfully fast. Then again, a lot has happened in those 10 years. On March 28, 2000 we were a year and a half until 9/11/2001.

Watching the YouTube video, when the Kingdome implodes, it brought 9/11 to mind. The Seattle destruction probably made more of a mess than the Jerry Jones Arlington destruction. Key difference being in Seattle only the Seahawks lost their home, in Arlington, thousands lost their home.