That pretty much says it all.

As for what this is about:

For those who don't know, I live in west TN, and on friday afternoon, we had a bunch of *really* bad storms and a tornado.

I think that was the scariest tornado warning I've been through in a VERY. VERY. long time. The second we got into the hall under a mattress, we started hearing stuff breaking outside. ...and then, if that wasn't bad enough, right after that started, the power went off and everything went completely black.

Even worse...we didn't have a mini-TV we could use because this happened on THE day of the swap to digital TV and we just hadn't had time to address that yet as concerned our mini-TV.

(And by all rights, it shouldn't have mattered, because we NEVER. EVER. have this kind of weather anywhere remotely near this time of year. Or rather, when we do, it's really rare. This was VERY much not something we could have forseen.)

So in other words, we were stuck in the hall for 30+ minutes (from about 5:00-5:30 PM or so--right around dinnertime), with things snapping outside, almost total darkness, and absolutely NO way for us to even know what was going on, aside from a veryveryflaky radio we remembered after a few minutes that only barely got AM radio, and was being messed up two-thirds of the time by the severe lightning.

And once it was over...? Well, when we went outside, our house and yard was pretty much ok, but god...every other yard down the street nearly had all their trees ripped down, including some that had fallen onto garages and such. Quite a few people also lost fences, and/or parts of fences. Even the metal pole to the neighbor's birdhouse was bent over.

(However...apparently, the tornado didn't even DO all of that. It wasn't even right outside, because we'd have heard that train noise if it were that close--turns out, the damage in *my* neighborhood was mostly just the straight-line winds. Apparently, the storm was *THAT* bad. o_o; )

As for us, we lost one section of a maple tree in our backyard (luckily, it fell the other way into the yard, and not into my bathroom), and a couple of sections of fence at the other house (we technically still own my dad's dad's house, but he died a while back and we think we're getting ready to sell it)...

...not to mention our power, along with something like 130,000 other people. o_o

Unfortunately, we were in/near one of THE hardest-hit areas, so we didn't get our power back for almost four days (day four would be tomorrow). As a matter of fact, it just came on less than an hour ago.

In other words, I've had a lousy time of it since friday, and could have got wiped off the map by a tornado (one *was* officially confirmed fairly close to here, and it's rumored that one was even closer, at an intersection practically just down the road from here, but that's not confirmed), but instead, the straight-line winds from the storm took out our power for the entire weekend.

Luckily, though, other than the lack of electricity and ability to tell people I know that I'm *NOT* dead, I'm fine, and, for anyone who wanted to know, yeah.

I didn't die.

I just nearly went insane from a combination of outright terror (I'm a *really* horrible tornado-fearer), no power, and the heat. @_@;

Thank GOD it's all over and back to normal now.