Good evening, Netizens...

We had an interesting little set-to earlier this evening, when the Spokane News Media collaborated once again with The Spokane Weather Bureau to broadcast a severe thunderstorm warning. It has been two years since we last had a really severe thunderstorm of any magnitude here in Spokane and then the Spokesman-Review sent its photographers scattering out into the dark that night, and to their extreme credit, they obtained some pretty good time-lapse pictures of the night skies lit up by flash after flash of earth-ground lightning.

Alas, most of the storm tonight moved to the East of Downtown Spokane, purportedly dumping a little hail on parts of Millwood and heavy rains, thus sparing us the light show, although we did get an early burst of wind as the storm front passed, with an unofficial gust of approximately 39 MPH at Glass and Morton Streets in Spokane, which knocked all the garbage cans akimbo. Also unofficially, it rained heavily for half an hour, no light show to speak of, not even a flicker of the lights in the Grand Ballroom.

Our barrista in the Virtual Espresso Bar served up another round on the house, once the discussion of the storm had ended. Meanwhile at the end of the bar, one of our resident ghosts just cleaned up a 5-card stud poker game, winning 11 matchsticks and another free espresso on the house. If it were any more exciting here in the Grand Ballroom, we would need nitro for all the heart patients, when Artie Shaw begins playing from our Virtual Stage at 11:00 o'clock.

In the meantime I am heading for my repose until tomorrow at 3:00 AM.

Dave

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