Like I said before, this summer has been NUTS. A few of the good, the bad and the ugly updates:
Day-to Day: Work has been NUTS. Mr S and I are so busy - it's a good thing, but it's exhausting too. The other bad thing about being so busy, is not being able to take a little time off and actually take a real vacation. Oh, well...always next year, right?
Flood Fighting: This has got to be the most covered up National Disaster ever. Since the end of May, the whole Missouri River area has been in a flood fight. And why is it covered up? BILLIONS of dollars in lost crops/income, damaged homes/farms, destroyed infrastructure and where places weren't damaged - MILLIONS were spent fighting the flood with new berms/levees, sand bags, pumps, assessment teams and so many other things. Our family was directly affected in many ways including: longer commutes to work since I-29 and I-680 were inundated (and subsequently obliterated) - now instead of getting to work in 40-45 mins - it takes Mr S and I at least an hour to get to Omaha (if we're lucky - it's more like 1.25 hrs or more); I was put on flood watch at work and was required to go to Council Bluffs DAILY at 5:15 AM to track levee assessments/incidents - it was really tough, but as of last Friday, I'm done - I'm SO NOT seeing 4:30 am again for a VERY LONG time. I'm also working on another flood fighting project at our nuclear station - it's really interesting, but I hope not ever have to do this in our area ever again (if I have to travel somewhere else because I now have that experience, fine, but I'll be part of the mob that goes after the COE if they ever flood us again; we were also told that Mr. S's house in the Valley "might" flood, in fact the stupid Army Corps of Engineer's predicted that we would have 4-8 ft of water there! So our stupid renter moved out and left us a HUGE mess and we couldn't get another in with that kind of forecast. What a mess...Probably the only good thing that came out of it was seeing how resilient and how self-sacrificing so many people were. As sucky as it was to work so early in the morning, I was blown away daily by the employees with the City of Council Bluffs at their dedication to their citizens and humbleness to help out how ever they all could.

So sad - so environmentalists, should the stupid birds have their nests (because it's not like they can't adapt or anything) or people lose more homes?