Around 2 o’clock this morning, the end of days started outside my house. I always figured I’d have a hand in it. The storms that would spawn a couple of tornadoes were passing overhead. Naturally, I went back to sleep, turning up the white noise app on my phone so the thunderstorm sounds would drown out the thunderstorm outside.

I awoke to terror: my patio furniture had blown slightly askew! I called the National Weather Service to get a tornado survey team out here.

In actuality, several neighbors were posting pictures on facebook showing broken windows or damaged cars, so I didn’t feel so bad about my power going out and waking up to find my cell phone battery was already depleted (I believe that’s EF-2 damage on the Enhanced Fujita scale).

On Sunday, I had been called out to cover the hail storms. A former co-worker texted me, saying her roof was damaged, so I went to her neighborhood in Denton.

This is one of the weird things about covering these storms: when you go to an area where no one got hurt, people are often yukking it up. In this case, a woman had wandered into the street to watch the neighbors tape up a car window that had been hit. The neighbor would tell me he’s just glad he doesn’t own one of the dealerships by the freeway, although he was looking forward to another “hail sale.”

This morning, I went to a Tarrant County College campus where the electricity had been knocked out. The police officer parked at the entrance looked at my car and said, “I bet you’re not here for class.” She guided me in to take some pictures, then I went to the convenience store across the street. There, several students were milling about outside because the store didn’t have power. The guy who owned the restaurant next door stopped in to see if his food was okay. One of the kids yelled out, “It was never okay!”

Around noon, I headed a few miles up Highway 360 to cover the groundbreaking of Texas Live (Exclamation Point). It was a nice break from storm coverage. In fact, the Rangers gave me a pledge pin.

When I got home a few hours later, though, my power was still out. I checked the Oncor outage map, which now has the estimated time for restoration as “ten minutes after your milk spoils,” so I’m writing this as the battery on my laptop runs out of powe…

Wait, why would I have typed an ellipse if the battery was dying?! That’s longer than the letter, “R.”

Here’s a better closer: I’ll have to bill the Lord for sending a storm that caused my milk to spoil.