Deep Thoughts

Well that was a fun two hours of lying in my bed wide awake. Time to get up at make a sandwich and drink some tea, I s'pose.

It's interesting because in the dark, I have all these thoughts that seem so fluid and beautiful and poignant. But now that I'm sitting in my kitchen I think I want to write about floods. Firstly, water is good. However, too much water is bad. A playful puddle may turn out to be a deadly sink hole. Bummer, huh? I was just day-dreaming (or laying awake thinking?) about the Great Flood of '08 which rocked western Michigan. It was June, I think, and I was welcoming the summer scene good and proper at my BFF Rhys' house. This was when she still dwelt on 21st Street. We all congregated on the cement front stoop, watched the light show across the sky and mused at how fast the water was climbing her driveway. So high it became that it began to graze the undercarriage of Ruby, my VW Passat, which sat parallel to that stoop. That was a fun and electric evening. Adrenaline invoked, we all danced in the rain, I'm pretty sure. Or maybe I didn't because I was wearing a white tee-shirt... or maybe I did. Not to mention I had some good beer... sigh... good beer... an IPA called Two Hearted to be exact.

Now the Great Flood of '09 was a different story. Same water, same rain but the power was out for days completely ruining the Pad Kee Mao leftovers I had in the fridge - a tremendous loss to be assured! On the night of the storm, there was no party in the street. I had to work a 3rd shift that evening, 8pm-6am, and watch helplessly as over $250,000 of damage crippled Hope College. The phones were ringing, the alarms were alarming, the science building no longer had an operational 1st floor, and every available custodian that ever existed was on-campus. The joys of working in a 24/7/365 office are endless, let me tell you. Nearly every single road was submerged in at least a foot of water, even at the center line, and some roads were just completely washed out. Our quaint little Holland community was literally at a stand-still because Mother Nature lost her shit. In the days that followed, I did order more Thai food carry-out, but the trip to pick it up took at least twice as a long, causing all kinds of headaches.

Well, those are my thoughts on flooding. I can't imagine you read my blog because you want to know what goes through my mind at all hours of the night. But there it is.