05/25/04 TUE:
---Made it through another stormy night without meeting our final doom. Others hereabout have been more greatly inconvenienced, so our luck held out through this go-round. The rest of the workweek promises a nice drying out period, so I am glad for that. The tornado siren down the street went off only twice yesterday evening--versus four or five times a couple nights before--and the power was out for about three hours. Kind of relaxing sitting there in the dark for a while. The two or three inches of rain piledriving into our leaky frontporch windows had subsided by then, sopping just about the full complement of my old-towel supply. Nothing else too crazy I can see from it so far. But after all this rain it might take a couple days for it to make the sump pump have to do its job. It has not been run in years and I have not tested it as I should--so there’s still a chance of being victimized!

---After hastily posting the above, I headed out for a few days on the road. Met my parents in Columbia, MO, then drove together down to Sikeston, MO for the funeral services of my uncle Manuel Drumm. My father had to give one of the speeches, so he was understandably apprehensive as well as upset over the loss of his brother. Combine that with concerns over his own health, as an octogenarian, and it was a dicey situation at times.