Monday night Chicago was plagued with scary storms, including a series of tornado warnings that even caused the fair city to blare it’s warning tornado sirens.

Out in the western suburbs, we were quietly enjoying some tivo, but keeping one eye turned towards the sky, which was an unnatural, otherworldly color. Suddenly, the tornado warning sirens went off and our adrenaline started surging. TO THE BASEMENT, we shouted, and grabbed what we could as we ran downstairs – computers, i-phones, and for some strange reason, I grabbed Robert’s wallet. In case we needed to buy something down there, I guess.

We discovered we’re woefully unprepared for any type of emergency. The basement is still in a state of disrepair, and the flashlights were no where to be found. No bottled water, no emergency radio, no ponchos, no umbrellas, no first-aid kit, no nothing.

We used our wireless internet on our laptop to track the thunderstorm from the basement.

The first warning we saw on weather.com was for a tornado in our area and possible nickel-sized hail.

About 10 minutes later, after refreshing the page, the warning was changed. No tornado, and the hail size reduced from nickel-sized hail to penny-sized hail.

Robert turns to me, and without missing a beat, says “Recession”.

I couldn’t stop laughing. Luckily, we didn’t get hit by a tornado, and the Mini didn’t get hit by either nickel- or penny-sized hail. We lost our cable but not our power, but all of our neighbors across the street were without power for a day. I’m glad we weren’t swept away by any tornado or pelted with any type of money-sized hail.