So...taking out the dirty cat litter.

Realize a millisecond too late the door has locked behind me, and there is nothing in my pocket. No keys, no phone, no money, no bankcard.

But very fortunately, I'm not locked out of my *building*, just the apartment, because I usually prop the door open. Find neighbor with phone. Call landlady, super. Nada. Track down M, my friend/co-worker who lives a block away and catsits. She is at work, of course. But she'll come.

About a half hour later she arrives, as the sky is beginning to look like the evil greenish-grey inside of a roiling, boiling cauldron of some particularly evil potion.

Invite M in for coffee. The Weather Channel is predicting apocalypse. No sooner is the coffee brewed than the air-raid sirens start all over the city. That's some eerie shit, 'cause I've never heard 'em all over a city this size before.

We're still watching the weather channel crawler when it says there's been a funnel cloud spotted...in a neighborhood about a mile to our immediate west moving about 45 mph.

I pick up Digory, my phone, and my KEYS and say cheerfully to M, "Wanna take a tour of our basement?"

Which we did. Just took about 20 minutes for the sirens to stop. Much ado about nothing, really. But what if it wasn't?