I've been in Omaha for nearly one month now and cannot believe how quickly time is flying by. Work is wonderful. I am making progress slowly but surely on my project. And although I feel as if it is moving at the speed of molasses, my mentors assure me that I am ahead of the game. As of today, details of development are just about completely set and tomorrow, I begin recording my stimuli. Hopefully data collection will begin within the next two weeks so that I have enough time to write at least the first draft of my manuscript before I head out in early-August. I've posted some pictures of my lab and the clinic so you can get a feel for how fun Boys Town is for children. It really is turning out to be an incredible place to work.
The city of Omaha has proven to be exciting in ways for which I wasn't quite prepared. No one told me how much it stormed here. No one!! We have severe (and I'm talking severe weather & flash flood warning) thunderstorms about every other day. For those of you who know me, you understand how unsettling this might be for me. For those of you who surprisingly don't know this about me yet - I am terrified of thunder and lightning. Yes, I know. I realize that I am no longer 7 years old and that nothing bad is going to happen, but it still scares the be-jesus out of me. With that, I'd like to share with you my favorite thunderstorm story so far.
Last Monday evening, my roommates and I went to dinner at Michael Gorga & Pat Stelmachowicz's home. I realize that this in itself deserves an entirely different story, but that will be for another day. Having stayed for post-dinner conversation, we didn't get home until after 10pm - missing any calls from hospital security hoping to pass on the warnings of severe weather to come. You see, at the California House (that's what our duplex is called) we don't have cable TV. In fact, thanks to the digital turn-over, an old set of bunny ears with an inordinate amount of tin foil no longer even give us the 2.5 channels of television that previous residents had the luxury of experiencing. Any time there is an event worth broadcasting (say, a tornado watch), hospital security calls us to pass along the message.
So after dinner, we all go to bed - re-living the surreal evening at the Gorga's, only to be woken up around 4am to thunder shaking our windows. One loud crash after another and about 30 minutes into the earth-shattering storm, the sky lights up at the same time as a huge clap of thunder and an alarm goes off in the living room of our house. Naturally all four of us begin to panic and rush down to the entrance to the basement.
[Side note: our basement has a room that we can only imagine is for "bad children". Picture a wooden room, with two wooden benches pushed together to serve as a bed - and a blanket haphazardly thrown across it as if someone had just woken up and rushed out the door. Needless to say, we do not go into the basement unless we need to - not even when the world is ending outside our windows.] So we're huddled in our mud room - awaiting the rescue of hospital security. When they finally arrive, we're pleased to learn that the Boys Town fire department did in fact respond to our call. However, they did so simply by calling hospital security to ask if security would go check it out to see if the fire department's assistance was really needed. Only in Omaha. :)