Rain Rain Go Away

Yesterday, we were invited by our friends Tomoko-san and Jun-san to Japanfest, so we could watch her perform tea ceremony, or chado. It was really beautiful and so interesting, even the Chipster paid attention!

Yesterday was also our sixth anniversary, and we went to South City Kitchen to celebrate. M had the pork with salsa verde and cheddar grits, and I had the spring mountain trout with asparagus and mashed ginger sweet potatoes. Delish! We followed up with a trip to Starbucks to work on the New York Times crossword puzzle and had an interesting time getting home in the rain.

This weather is really crazy, and a little scary at times. We were virtually trapped today but finally figured out how to get out of our neighborhood. M stayed home from work, based on our difficulty getting home from dinner last night. We took G in late to school and brought him home early to avoid the worst of the weather, but as soon as we got him home it let up and the buses got through. It's hard to know where the line is between careful and paranoid, but we are definitely walking it!

This is Highway 278 in Hiram, closed. Our first of three flooded and impassable roads on the way home:

This is the view from our kitchen window - the creek in the property behind ours has turned into a lake and is all the way up to the fence separating our land from theirs. It was actually higher than this earlier today but the water levels are rising and receding very quickly.

Here is one of the blocked roads near our neighborhood. Despite the bridge, this normally looks like a normal road between two fields. In fact, before today I had never even realized that this is a bridge:

You can see a slideshow of some of the local flooding here.