Umbrella? What Umbrella?

If you live Oklahoma, you get plenty of opportunities to experience the wind that comes sweeping down the plains. If, like me, you grew up in Oklahoma, you learn to deal with the wind and, during those rare extended periods of no wind (to me, that's a wind speed less than 10 mph) you actually start to miss it.

One of the ways I've dealt with wind is to not carry an umbrella. I'm not sure how many umbrellas were blown inside-out before I learned this coping skill, but at one time I reached a point where I stopped buying new umbrellas.

The down side is that I have to think ahead for dealing with rainy days. Usually, I try to park close enough that I can dart from building to tree (yeah, I know, bad idea if lightning is involved) to building to get to work.

Today, though, I couldn't use that strategy because my car went into the shop for repairs. Sure enough, a thunderstorm rumbled into town just as I was leaving for work.

No umbrella, of course.

I stuffed a couple of garbage bags into my backpack, knowing that I could use them as ponchos (for some reason, I forgot to buy emergency ponchos when I had the chance). But I knew that my head would still get wet. And besides, wearing the garbage bag poncho over my backpack would make me look like the Hunchback of the Garbage Heap.

In a flash of inspiration and a rumble of satisfaction (or maybe it was the lightning and thunder that did the flash and rumble thing?), I grabbed an unused storage tote lid and headed out to the bus stop.

Awesome! It kept my head dry and was big enough to keep my backpack dry as well. Not only that, but I knew that a gust of wind wouldn't turn the thing inside-out.

After I got off the bus (people looked but didn't say anything about my tote lid), I still had a few blocks to walk to get to my workplace.

The rain had more or less stopped, so I carried the lid next to me.

I discovered its next use when a car drove though a puddle in the street next to where I was on the sidewalk. With my "totebrella" at my side, the water didn't splash me. 

Yess!!

I made it to my office and from there to my class (it had started raining again by the time I'd ascended the stairs from the basement to emerge outside), using my rain shield.
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I wonder if I could make any money marketing the Totebrella?

My Biggest Fan

   I recently bought a Lasko Wind Tunnel Fan.  I spent quite a bit of time in the fans aisle at the store, searching for just the right one.  For me, looks aren't really that important in a fan.  I'm interested in the white noise.  Sounds can trigger memories, and I was looking for just the right sound.
   When I was little, we had an old box fan.  I don't know how old it was, but it was encased in a wooden frame that was sturdy enough that an adult could sit on it.  The blades were metal and the front grill consisted of thin metal vertical strips of metal, some of which would vibrate and hum when the fan was blowing.  The fan and the motor combined to make a certain sound that I found very soothing.
   Of course, I was too big to take naps at the time, so on a hot summer day my mom would tell me just to stretch out in front of the fan and rest, perhaps with a book.  And so I did.  The fan sounded like an airplane to me.  And I would imagine that the airplane was a cargo plane, flying over a jungle in South America, bringing supplies to a small village in a valley between two mountains...
...
   And then I would close my eyes.  And I would see the jungle in my mind's eye.  Hanging onto cargo straps, I would lean out the open door on the side of the plane and feel the rush of the wind as we flew ever onward.  The heat of the jungle rose up to the plane, but the wind would keep it pleasantly warm and not too hot.  The cargo plane had pontoons so we could land on the small lake in the valley.  And we would land and unload the supplies to the villagers, who greeted us happily and asked out where we had been, the sights we had seen, and the adventures we'd had on our journeys...       
...
   An hour or so later, I woke up.  Once again, my mom had tricked me into taking a nap.  But I didn't mind.
   Flashing forward to now - I found a fan that, although it's not a wooden and metal sturdy-to-be-furniture fan of yesteryear, came close to the droning of the cargo plane from my childhood imagination.
   Last night I turned the fan on, and feeling the wind wash over me, I imagined once again being in a cargo plane, taking supplies to a far off village.  I was probably asleep in two minutes.