Purple Screaming Monkey

Music: Radiohead - Karma Police
Feeling: Nice and dry. And with the power back on, I want to a hot cup of tea

Today, I woke up to thunder at 7 in the morning. I was tempted to phone in and ask if I had to come to work, but decided to be a trooper and go.

There were no kids at the waterpark and I ended up scrubbing and cleaning the splash pad with the rest of my co-workers. Then the thunder started and we shut down the waterpark. For more then a hour. We had some disppointed kids, but hey, we're evil and were secretly doing rain dances when the drum cafe was going on next to us. Of course, the spalsh pad is just to darn dangerous for the kids, and we still had to scrub the dirt off the splash pad with the thunder. We were grumbling about where the hell the rain was.

But we must have done a very good job with the rain dance since sercuity came and told us that Toronto was under a torando watch and that we had to get out. We ended up at the admin buildings where the lights were flickering and the glass atrium was nice and dark and showed us the lovely lightening that was going on. Then the rain started.

Well if you were in Toronto, you know how the storm was like. Raining so hard that is was like looking through a white fog of raindrops. We punched out early and stared at the storm with the rest of the zoo staff by a glass door. It was in the monsoon stage by then, the wind was blowing so hard.

Then Rick announces that he's running to the front enterance to catch the bus. Let me mention that the front enterance is about a 10 minute walk in good weather from where we were. And that's taking the shortcut.

A staff member sensibly points out that he shouldn't. The wind was blowing so hard that it would flip out our umbrellas and that the lightening and thunder was still going on. She pointed to the pathway that was already flooded with murky brown water and with what was most likely goose poop.

Then Maddy says that she always wanted to know how it felt to run through a rainstorm. Rick and Maddy then procede to plan out the route. I point out that they have to go the long way since the shortcut through a field was most likely flooded and muddy. They decide to stop at certain points to catch their breath. Umbrellas had to be forgotten since it was to windy.

Then they get ready to run out. Everyone is saying that they should wait it out. They open the door.

I follow and run for my life to a shed that's barely visble in the rain from the admin building.

Let me say it was one of the most stupid things I have done. Damn peer pressure. And romantic ideas about how it feels to run while there's thunder and lightening crashing above you in a storm.

I got soaked in 3 seconds. While lightening and thunder was crashing overhead. I gave up trying to avoid puddles since the entire pathway is flooded. Breathing was hard since raindrops were falling into my mouth.

It took 30 minutes with 3 break points from the admin building to the bus shleter. It was fun for about 5 minutes until I found out how out of shape I really was. I walked near the end since I figured that I was as wet as I could get and that running wouldn't make a difference.

It was worst when I got on the bus with Maddy and Rick for 2 hours since we got stuck in traffic, various car accidents and rush hour. I went from laughing about the whole thing, to wanting a nice hot cup of tea in about 15 minutes, then wanting a beer about a hour into the bus ride when Maddy's MP3 died and wondering if offering a piece of gum to the person squished next to me who had bad breath was bad manners. I finally wanted to snap when I got to my stop almost 2 hours later and hot box the bus to have the passengers to relax, inlcuding the driver who enjoyed honking the horn for long periods of times and threatened to drive non-stop to Don Mills Station if some old lady didn't stop ringing the bell mutiple times in a row. Maybe the smoke would have stopped the lady from ringing the bell non-stop too. It would have been a win-win situation.

Needless to say, after 30 minutes running to in the rain and looking like a drowned rat , I don't feel sick yet. Yay.

But running in the middle of a torando watch/lightening storm is now off my list of things to do before I die.