We've had an exciting day around here. First, I got an email from a Texas cousin I've never met. He and his 87 year old grandmother have been doing some root digging and he found my family tree online. He contacted me before Christmas, but I was too sick to care. He sent this picture, which includes my grandfather Charlie Johnson on the left with his sister Nellie (Harriet Penelope Johnson Barron of Crystal Springs, MS), their brother Willie (William Coleman Johnson of Culpepper, Virginia, the only sibling who stayed there and didn't migrate south then west like the rest of them), and another sister Mollie (Mildred Virginia Johnson Smith of Jackson, MS). I had never seen pictures of Willie or Nellie, even though I met Aunt Nellie when I was a child. She was my daddy's favorite aunt, and on his trips from New Orleans back to Plantersville, he usually stopped in Crystal Springs for a visit and lunch. I have vague recollections of accompanying him a couple of times, but very vague.

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The grand prize will be the picture of their father, John Nunum Johnson, whom neither Skip nor I have ever seen. Skip's mom left her curiosity about family trees with him and me, but we got a diluted dose of it compared to her, I'm afraid. Anyway, welcome cousin Kevin to this side of your family. If you're reading this, you may learn more about your kinfolks than you really wanted to know.

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Then the weather radio started screeching, the Civil Defense siren went off, the dogs were howling and I soon discovered we were under a tornado warning. So Gus and Jay-Jay and I spent almost an hour in the closet under the stairs. Mike was at the gym, so I didn't have to worry about him. I finally corralled the cats and locked them in together in the downstairs bathroom. They don't like each other, at all, so there was a good deal of racket at first, but then they settled down 'til the storm had passed. Evidently, a funnel cloud passed within a mile of us, but we got no damage... still don't know if anybody close-by did, but I'm sure we'll hear it tonight on the news.

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The other excitement came in the wee hours of the morning when I figured out how to play an audio file on this blog. With this being a bad weather day, I've compiled a slide show of various images that represent some of the things I've seen today with an Etta James song to accompany it. I hope this works...let me know if it doesn't and I'll go back to the drawing board. It's crude (production-wise, not content-wise), but it is a first. Suggestions for improvement are welcome.

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Oh foot! It didn't work! Oh well, I've just about mastered Power Point. Maybe I can figure out how to post that somewhere. And it was such a cool little crude video that had "Stormy Weather" for a soundtrack.

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Here are the ingredients of today's "Dump Soup." It was delicious, so I try to make a record when happy accidents like this occur. There was only about an inch of Salsa left in the jar, which I used, it was not the whole jar.

It's one can each: Hormel Turkey Chili 99% fat free, Kroger Diced Tomatoes, Tri-Bean Blend, Progresso Minestrone Soup, Campbell's Chunky Old-Fashioned Vegetable Beef Soup, Stokley's Cream-Styled Corn, and a little Pace Chunky Salsa. Really good on a day like today, higher in sodium than my doc would approve, but tasty.