March madness

A and I watched a good bit of the ACC men's basketball tournament this past weekend (yay, Tarheels!). A also watched an episode of The Backyardigans in which they played a ping pong tournament. Although we do not have a ping pong table, he made up a game that he plays in the sunroom that involves a small foam ball and a paddle-shaped bubble wand. When he plays this game, he calls it the ACC tournament.

Yesterday afternoon he was in a bit of a bad mood because he had gotten in trouble in school and consequently lost a few privileges at home. He also then lost use of the ping pong "paddle" because of repeated violations and the tournament commissioner (that would be me) penalized him.

A then made the pictured sign, to tell everyone that the tournament had been canceled. He asked only how to spell "tournament" and "canceled", and thank goodness, I spelled them both correctly.
The sign reads:
"Aidan M. The ACC tournament is canceled so no one can come to watch."

The weather gods are angry

Holy moly, it has been a chaotic two days here in north Georgia. On Friday night, a tornado hit downtown Atlanta. I was watching basketball when the warning came on that there was a severe thunderstorm moving through the downtown area and that rotation had been spotted by Doppler radar. We are far enough south of the city so that there was no effect on us and we went to bed shortly after I saw the information.

Yesterday, Saturday morning, we were looking forward to sleeping past our usual weekday rising time of 6:15 am. Nature had other ideas: around 6:15, we were hit by a loud thunderstorm that woke all three of us up. J went and got A from his room, and the three of us cuddled in bed while the storm flashed, thundered and rained. Not a fun way to start the day!

I was shocked when I accessed the Atlanta Journal-Constitution web site later in the morning and read that a tornado had struck downtown, causing substantial damage. The forecast for the day wasn't much better; we had to be on the alert for more powerful storms that had the potential to spawn tornadoes. It rained here off and on, and the sky often got very dark and ugly, but we did not get additional storms until right around dinner. North of Atlanta, however, was a different story: apparently more tornadoes struck and at least two people are confirmed dead.

April may be the "cruelest month" but March, so far, is certainly no picnic.