LJ: Conditions to avoid driving in

So after leaving work last night, I drove over to Tower on West Ox. I don't like going to that store because it's just not at all laid out well, and they have this massive empty area in the back where they used to have some fairly cool books for sale (mostly music-related stuff). Now it's just this large empty area. It makes the whole store feel abandoned.

So I'm over there, I do my browsing, mentally make note of three or four CDs I'm going to pick up on my way out, then go over to the magazine racks. They have an impressive collection of magazines for just about anything you could want - graphic design, sports, games, music (of course) and a bunch of 'zines. There's one in particular that I like reading. It's $7, which means I don't buy it, but it's photocopied onto 11x17 paper, so it looks kewl. It's some midwest-bred conspiracy mag. The author-editor-publisher was going on about some connection between Princess Diana's accident and an octopus. I didn't quite get the connection, but it was a good time.

Anyway, I'm reading, and the lights in the place start flickering. Apparently while I was in there, an enormous line of thunderstorms popped up. Tower (and everything else in that mall-ish area) ended up losing power for about three minutes. Shortly after the emergency lights came on, the manager of the store came on the intercom sounding like a bomb had gone off or something - he was that agitated - and ordered everyone out of the store. Not, "Attention Tower shoppers, due to the power failure, we're closing the store temporarily. Please leave the store by the quickest exit" or something remotely polite. He said, "Everyone's got to get out of the store now!" I spotted him shortly thereafter running wildly through the store picking stragglers off and ushering them out the door. I don't know if Tower HQ instills this sense of panic in all of their managers, but it's rather unsettling, and makes the manager look like a buffoon.

I lingered outside the store until a different manager came out and said that the store wouldn't be reopening for at least another hour. Another hour?!? How long could it possibly take to get the network back up? Does it take them at least an hour every morning to get the place up and running before letting customers in? Ugh.

Anyway, that little journey was shot, and all I had to show for it was... well, that part of this entry, really. So I'm forced to write about it in order for it to not be a colossal waste of time.

So I drove home. That took about an hour and a half, as we had an astonishingly long-lived and heavy storm last night. It was so bad at points that traffic on the Beltway was voluntarily going 15 mph, not because of traffic, but just because you couldn't see far enough in front of your car to drive faster than that. Dozens of people had pulled onto the shoulders, which was pretty much the only way I could tell I was at least still in the roadway.

I finally did get home, and sat out on the porch for about half an hour, watching the lightning.

There wasn't much that I liked about the midwest, but the thunderstorms out there just could not be beat. The tornadoes I could do without, but the storms were cool as shit.

And now we're in the middle of yet another impressive storm. I really do love this time of year.