just got back to the office from an assignment and found a box of jasmine green tea on my desk from barbara the copy desk chief. my favorite! and it made a lot of things better...


anyway, back in the wacky world of Tami...

i was driving up to the Polaris area (allegedly where the al Qaeda bombers wanted to attack) to report on a story, not that one...

so i'm driving in the tiny tiny company car and it starts raining...then piles of black clouds come around, water is just falling out of the sky now...i can't see anything and my wipers are on high! i am still driving and hear tons of thunder over my music...but then see these huge bolts of lightening splitting down across the sky, all the way down...right to where i'm driving. man...i've probably seen as many thunder/lightning storms as in my life right here. anyway, i'm still driving and water is just spilling everywhere. i'm all the way forward in my seat so that i can see the road...b/c it's really REALLY hard to see w/ so much rain falling so fast.

well, w/in 5 minutes there's almost a foot of rain, it was so scary...and my tiny car is fording through intersections. ppl around me start pulling off the road...we're all going no more than 10 miles per hour, probably a lot less...

anyway...b/c of recent experiences with water, i was starting to freak out quite a bit, b/c hey...i'm from California, it NEVER rains that much!!! I started worrying that I might just drown if my car (which started making sounds...) didn't make it...b/c literally at one point it felt like it was nearly floating and wasn't getting any traction. did i mention that i tried braking at one intersection and the car almost didn't make it? ... anyway, I was freaking out and really wanted to call Patrick b/c he's driven in such weather, actually driving with him at one point in such weather really helped me with this experience. so i wanted to call him b/c i was really getting nervous, but knew that i shouldn't...even tho, i was like...well, i could just die & then it would have maybe been smarter to have called him. but, anyway, i tried to stick to my guns and didn't call him. luckily about 10 minutes later the rain slowed down a bit b/c i was in a different area. then i heard on the radio...AFTER all that, that the specific area i was in was in flash flood watch. wonderful. but hey! i'm alive.

i told the ppl at the Dispatch that i would die for my duty. they liked it.