I am alive. I am OK. My place is too.

For everyone who sent me e-mails and voice mail messages, thank you so much for your concern. For those unaware, a tornado touched down in my neighborhood in Atlanta last Friday night. Actually, it was one of several that touched down. My place survived, but plenty of my neighbors lost their homes. Luckily and amazingly no one lost their lives.

I was not in town when it happened, so I can't give you any firsthand experience stories. I was in NJ when it hit. I found out about it when I was at the airport Saturday morning. The first image I saw was a photo of a tree on top of a sign that reads “Welcome to Cabbagetown.” That sign is just down the street from me. I became afraid of the unknown. I wondered how my friends and neighbors were. I called everyone I could before boarding the plane. Unfortunately, I was unable to reach anyone. So I had to sit through the entire flight wondering, and thinking, of the worst.

When I did get home I was happy to see that my place was intact. I have three large west-facing windows that I was sure would have been destroyed. Nope. They were fine. My neighbors were safe and healthy. One neighbor had some damage to his roof. It’s a tin roof so we quickly and easily repaired it.

The neighbor didn't fare so well. Numerous houses had extensive damage -- either from the tornado ripping the roofs off or from trees falling on them. Everywhere you looked there was debris. I rode my Vespa around, weaving back and forth avoiding all the carnage. I wanted to first survey and take some photos. Because our building survived, we (the tenants) wanted to go out and assist the people who needed help. Unfortunately, the police were stopping people from entering certain roads. They did it for safety reasons but also because some scum were looting the damaged homes.

So for the rest of the day I cleaned my yard. That was until a second stormfront came through. This one brought plenty of hail the size of golf balls with few baseball-sized ones thrown for extra pain and damage. This stormfront also brought several more tornados. They touched down in other surrounding neighborhoods -- sadly, taking the lives of several people.

For everyone in our building, once again we suffered no damage. What did happen was that we all came together. We ate and drank together. We all bonded. It's odd how certain situations can bring people together.