No frogs predicted.

Yesterday I dialed some digits on my phone, holding it hard to my ear to hear over the banging. Brrrrrt! Brrrrrt! Brrrrrrt! [Was he ever gonna pick up? I hadn't yet read that he was indisposed most of yesterday.] Brrrrrt! Click! "Ambulance Driver."

"A.D., my house has been descended upon by a gang of Mexicans with gas-operated guns!" I began.

"Who the Hell is this?" he responded.

We chatted for another hour, while the Spanish-speaking work crew re-shingled my roof with compressed-air-powered nail guns. Toward the end, I noticed something wrong-- silence. I went outside and found that I had a new roof, and all traces of the efficient work crew were gone. Disappeared. No bits of old shingle or tar paper. No nails. Certainly no soft drink cans. Good work, done in about 5 hours. Well, heck-- for the $4,200 and change the insurance company figured the job cost, I should darned well get good service.

Today, about two hours after I scratched out a $2800 check to the roof repair contractor for the new roof ($1000 deductible, and depreciation...), I was out mowing, when this crap hit me.* Air got COLD. Low clouds started becoming turbulent and pebbly grey on the bottom, as cold air descended through the layer of warm moist air. Not good. Pea-sized hail first started bouncing off my head and the mower, before it turned to dime-sized (parked the Honda under the front yard tree), and on to nickle-sized.

I sat on the front porch, and watched chunks of ice just large enough to use to chill your beverage bounce off of my brand-new, $4000 roof.
_ _ _ _


* Note the Yellow and the Green squares in the middle of the red band? That'd be my house in there. Very nice.