...next thing you know, we landed smackdab on top of a witch...

"This was the thing that I was least worried about moving here," Jen declared to me once we had switched our DVR back to live TV after we had just finished watching what was the first of the evening's two brand new episodes (finally!) of Chuck, NBC's wacky, totally illogical but adorably super-spiffy spy comedy.

Strolling casually in a bottom-screen crawl on the local NBC affiliate was a tornado warning for southern Los Angeles County. A tornado warning. I had to agree with Jen. Moving here, I expected a much higher crime rate, insufferably hot weather, several of the biblical plagues (I've got my fingers crossed for frogs and toads, like in Magnolia), and of course, earthquakes. But I come from Alaska, and earthquakes are basically a thrill-ride there. But, tornadoes? Really? Jen said she expected a volcano to appear and erupt before she would ever hear of a tornado in this area. (Personally, I do not know how often such things occur around here, but now I am interested. All I know is that I have never heard of one, nor have I heard any one mention one before.)

We switched the channels several times to 1) make sure this wasn't a put on of some sort or part of the show that was on when it went live (this would be Trump's crappy show, itself a disaster that should come with its own red crawling warning... oh, it doesn't need it. It has Stephen Baldwin, a warning in itself...), and 2) find some other local information that wasn't part of a network crawl. Amazingly, no one seemed all that worried about an impending twister ripping apart L.A. All of the major networks simply had the crawl, no one had gone live to some control center, with panicked, blithering weathermen waving their arms frantically at maps that aren't really there, and even the Weather Channel had clung fiercely to the corporate line and gone to commercial just as we jumped over there for information. As had every single one of the cable news channels. So, no one seemed concerned... except, where we were, us.

Now, none of this would have concerned us normally, except that the phrase "south Los Angeles County" basically means "adjacent to north Orange County," which is where Anaheim lies, and therefore, where we lie down out heads at night. So, to see this, that there is a strong possibility of a tornado forming basically next door, and then to read in an ominous suspense-building text-crawl all of the things you should do in case of a tornado, actually became a little scary. I should say, a little scary for a few minutes. Because, within ten minutes of us first reading the crawl, the damn thing was over. They called off the warning, and apparently, even though we were (and still are) getting hitting by rain and wind, that particular storm cell that was causing the rampant fear had dissipated.

If we had just watched the next thing on our DVR recorder, we never would have seen this. And once we turned that show off, even just twenty minutes later, we would have had no way of knowing (unless we actually watched the 11:00 News, which we never do) that this happened at all. I worked from home today, so I didn't get a chance to ask anyone at the office about it, or get to see everyone's reactions to it. (Certainly I shall ask on Monday.)

And now, if I hear of amphibians raining from the sky, I will only be halfway surprised. I'll say to the first toad that I happen upon crawling across a windshield, "What took you so friggin' long? The tornado has already been here!"

He will merely say "ribbit." He's used to this disaster crap.