is it raining in reno?

so. i woke up this morning. to a loud police knock on the front door. the kind of knock where you know that it's the police. even if you've never had the police bust in your front door, you know automatically that it's them. either that or it's part of the group of friends your roommate is travelling to the bay area with for the weekend pretending to be the police.

they warned us. that if we didn't leave now, we might not be able to leave later. and if we did leave, we might not be able to get back in. because they were going to shut down our street. the river was going to crest (i believe is the proper term) and get ugly. flood. flood.

so i thanked the nice policeman. i told the others knocking on doors "good morning" and went back inside. i went upstairs and surveyed my belongings. being thankful my room, in all its messy glory, was upstairs.

then i called mom and dad. (after leaving a rambling nervous message on my brother's voicemail asking if i could possibly, maybe, if you don't mind, i hope i'm not imposing stay at your house because i'm being evacuated out of mine?) my dad offered the following advice:

"well. just take what you need. like if you were coming home for the weekend. but these just might be the only possessions you have later..."

comforting. and funny.

hazel and i jumped in the car. along with about seven socks. four pairs of unders. three tshirts. my laptop. everything hazel would need. my sonicare toothbrush. other various random things i decided to throw in my bag at the last minute. i had that moment where i wanted to decide the three things i would take if my house was on fire, or flooding, or whatever. and i think i failed. i didn't even remember my sleeping bag. how can i expect to survive?

so then i helped my friend arock move. i went up and down some stairs. helped by The Z. it was still raining. she lives on the third floor. and has numerous boxes of stuff. but that's what friends do. they move stuff. anyhoo. we did that.

and then The Z and i went to look. after we rescued my netflix movies from my post box. (must love dogs and winter solstice) i put hazel in my sweatshirt and we jumped across loads of water to stare at the all of the liquid making everyone frantic.

and there were so many people along the river walking, laughing, taking pictures with their digital cameras.. so many digital cameras.. i thought that was great.. i had this wonder.. about all of the photos that are going to be emailed across everywhere tonight. all of the "hey look at that, that's crazy!"s that will take place.. it was kind of.. nice.

anyway. here are some of mine. click on them to make them bigger.


if you can tell, there's a big pile of driftwood on this bridge.. being pulled out of the river and put in trucks by the big yellow crane thing.. as i was standing here, the water rose and there wasn't any space between water and the bridge.. oh. and normally there isn't this much water here.



here's the "nature" area at the end of my street.. there's supposed to be a parking lot and some boardwalks and things.. there's a house here, with water lapping at its sand bags.. the spots in the photo are raindrops.


more. water. turbulent water.


here comes the sun. but still there's water. a lot more water than there is normally.

but it's sort of anticlimactic. because i'm at home now. they didn't close down my road. my stuff isn't wet. but hazel is tuckered out from an exciting adventure. and isn't that all that counts?