Text message sent to friends this afternoon:

All of HSV is at Wal-Mart. You'd think nobody here had ever heard of a tornado before! Hint: toilet paper WILL NOT SAVE YOU.

A few minutes later, a reply from Suzan:

No, but it will cover your ass!

If we had battenable things, we'd batten until we were blue in the face. Chicken Little is currently running through my neighborhood, squawking madly about the gathering clouds in the sky. The Arsenal's sending people home early and all the schools closed by 1 p.m., so the kiddies are out playing in the neighborhood and pulling Chicken Little's tail while loving the unseasonably warm weather and everybody's just having a grand old time…

…and to the west, the clouds have called up all their friends and some long-lost relatives and have decided it's time to come to Alabama for one of those old-school throwdowns. They'll supply the hail; we'll supply the targets.

Will we get hit with the 'Oh God Oh God We're All Going To Die' storms that the NOAA's Storm Prediction Center (bonus points for those of you who grew up in tornado country, because you all just muttered "based out of Norman, Oklahoma") says are coming our way? No way to tell. We'll do what any good tornado-averse citizens will do: we'll listen to the weather radio, keep an eye on the radar, and if it gets ucky* we'll grab some necessities and head over to Wesley & Mary's.

They have a basement, after all.

I wonder if Chicken Little is tasty with barbecue sauce. Seriously, he's scaring the populace, and all I wanted was to buy my usual groceries today. I'm buying bananas and portobello mushrooms, people, do you really think I'm doing anything today but my usual grocery shopping? I thought not. Now quit pretending like that can of soup is the most important purchase ever; if you were really trying to do disaster preparedness you'd be buying bottled water and updating your first aid kit.

Not to be flippant or anything, but you guys know my usual statement. If I die, I'll call. ;)

* A technical term.