Surviving Race Week

It's race week in Bristol. I'm not a NASCAR fan, so race week is always something to "get through" for me. How does a non-NASCAR fan survive race week?

1. Get out of town for the week. This is my favorite way to deal with the race crowds, just by leaving and not coming back until they've left. Unfortunately, this isn't often an option. Gotta work for a living, y'know.
2. Make sure you have groceries in the house at least a week before the race. You can't believe how crowded the local grocery stores are during race week!
3. Plan to eat your meals at home. Restaurants are full of race fans, so eating at home is the only practical choice.
4. Stay out of Wal-Mart. I've never understood why people travel to Bristol to see a race and spend so much time at Wal-Mart. There's nothing I need from Wally World that won't wait until the race fans are on their way back home.
5. Grin and bear it. Sure, everything's crowded and traffic is worse than usual. But the race will be over Saturday night and by Monday Bristol will be back to normal.

We had a very unusual event here on Tuesday afternoon....an earthquake! It hit central Virginia just before 2:00 pm, and we only felt a tremor here. I happened to be on a conference call with other state employees across the Commonwealth when it struck. The folks on the call who were in the area of Richmond began shouting, "We're having a earthquake!" "We're leaving the building! We're leaving the building!" "What's happening?"

Then I felt the tremor. If I hadn't been hearing people shouting over the phone about the quake, I'd have thought I was having an attack of vertigo. It was a strange feeling, more of dizziness than a sensation of shaking. Then moments later I felt kind of a deep low shudder. So WEIRD!!

We soon learned that the quake was registered 5.8 on the Richter scale, the largest earthquake ever recorded in central Virginia. Not a big quake by California standards, but it broke a record. Before Tuesday the biggest quake recorded in central Virginia was a 4.8 in 1875!!

I should have known it was going to be an unusual week when it started with a call from my daughter, Kris, early Monday morning. She'd learned that she was going to have to have her thyroid surgically removed and wanted to call to tell me instead of e-mailing me. While I'm sorry that she's going to have to have surgery, I'm glad they're going to do something about her thyroid. They've been trying to control it with medication, but it's been just out of control for some time now. I'll be glad when it's done and over with, and I'm sure she'll be glad when it's over, too!!

Everyone over on the coast watch out for Hurricane Irene.....BE SAFE!! We're not expecting anything here from the storm, but it looks like more than 60,000,000 Americans could be dealing with it. It could be a rough weekend for an awful lot of folks.

A very eventful week so far....and this is only THURSDAY!!