I know many have heard my story of going through the tornado here in Joplin, MO, and the immediate aftermath, compliments of most every major news media in the country. What many may not have picked up on is that my story is not mine alone; all of the residents of Joplin, all those who were just passing through at the wrong time, and all those who have come to help aid the people of this city have stories, too. Each story is different with different perspectives and reactions.



For me, though, there is one person who shares a story very, very similar to mine, because he has been right there next to me through all of it, and that's Diego Hinkle. The part of the story the cameras haven't really covered is that that day, when the sirens went off, Diego was hanging out in my apartment. I went home as soon as the sirens sounded and asked him something I will probably never say again: "Do you want to go see a tornado?". As one of my best friends, he willingly gets roped into a number of my less sane ideas, and came along. I am so glad and grateful he did, on so many levels.



Diego rode through the storm with me in the car, running my camera set on video while I was shouting directions at him, trying to figure out a safe place for us to be. Diego helped me pull the guy who got out into the ditch into my car, and stayed with him, constantly monitoring him for concussion and checking if he was ok. Diego kept both the semi driver the police put in my car and the guy from the ditch calm and talking while I was checking others in other vehicles, and at the same time he managed to get through on the phones to most of our people to verify they were ok, as well as ahold of the truck driver's family and work. In the car until we could get to the triage intersection, Diego kept the truck driver talking, coming up with question after question, wiping his face to try to keep his eyes clear, and helping him turn so he could breathe better. Diego helped keep a former co-worker of mine calm and from going into shock while I looked for her son, then helped me search homes for anyone who might be trapped. When we got to the shelter, Diego jumped headfirst into volunteering, doing anything and everything anyone asked of him, without once ever complaining, and is still helping, every day.



In the last week, I've seen my name connected with everything from "livesaver" to "inspiration" to even "national hero". Memorial Day is normally about recognizing service members who've lost their lives in the service of this great country, and the need to thank every single person in a uniform in and from this country is great, especially with so many of those soldiers being here right now, helping us with this disaster....but for me, this Memorial Day isn't just about the soldiers who have lost their lives; it's for taking a moment to thank MY hero, friend, and "tornado buddy", Diego (David) Hinkle. Words can't express how grateful I am to him or how much he has done. I love you, Diego, and THANK YOU!

Ok, coolest thing evar. The above message isn't a joke--it actually used to be a different message, one I sent via an email; one that self destructed and originally looked like this:



Now, there are some obvious issues. The first, of course, is that I was actually able to get the "original" message just by right clicking on it when it was visible (before destruction) and saving it to my comp. Now normally this would be in an email, not in a blog post, and it wouldn't be quite that easy...but still perfectly doable. Theoretically you aren't supposed to print the message, either--which I promise that jpg is perfectly printable. For what it is, though, it seems to work fairly decently--you send a message, set a time, number of views, or time after opened, and once that quota has elapsed, it shows you the destruction message instead. Cool, and potentially handy...if I had some practical use for it besides idle amusement.

Am I a nerd? Yes, yes, I am.


.

Sorry it's been so long (again) since I posted. Maybe I should just stop apologizing for that and accept I'll be doing good if I post like...once a month!

I have a valid excuse this time, though--I've been insanely busy with school, work, ghost hunting, and Red Cross things. If you want to follow some of what I've been doing with them, check out the pictures on the Ozarks Red Cross Flickr page and the updates on the MoSo Twitter (@mosoghost). You'll even find a picture or two of me instead of only ones I've taken!

Classes start in a week, so my free time (ha!) is going to be even more nonexistent then, but I'll still toss things up when and as I get a chance. As always, be on the lookout for new ghosty things, new pictures, and follow me on Twitter (@MarieNCGH) for more regular updates. :)


.

Have I mentioned I'm really bad at updating blogs regularly? I'll try to do better.

For now...what all have I been up to? Mostly school work, work, volunteer things, and hanging out with friends when I can.

Not much is super interesting, except that I've taken more pictures and will try to get them up on my photo feed later today. (hint, hint: go check it out!)


.

I'm checking the ability to post to this via email, which is actually the exclusive reason I decided to run this as a blogger blog fed into my site rather than keeping it strictly on the Joomla cms. Unfortunately, I've yet to find a working, free method to allow posting content on Joomla via email, but if anyone reading this knows of a way, please comment and let me know!


.