I recently had to go to Kansas City for a video shoot.  I'd only been there once, and all I knew was it was the land of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.  It's also the land of the tornado.

 When I landed, everything seemed fine.  But when I sat down for dinner a few blocks from the hotel where I was staying, I noticed that the sky started changing colors.  The next thing I knew it was green and hail the size of golf balls started coming down.  I sat in the booth of a steakhouse wondering if this caesar salad would be my last when the waitress approached with a big fake grin.

"Just wanted to let you all know that a tornado touched down about 7 miles from here, so if we get the word, we may have to all gather into the meat cooler....(pause)...Can I get you anything else?"

My producer looked at me and said "Wanna order some shots?"

I liked her thinking.  If I'm going to go down huddled by sirloins in a walk-in cooler, I'd at least like to be tipsy.

Well, we didn't go with shots, (but two bloody mary's instead) and when we got to the hotel thinking the worst was over, there was nobody in the lobby.  The woman at the front desk said that everyone had been summoned into a conference room for cover.  "We are in tornado alley, you know." She said with a hint of "duh" in her voice.

Things calmed down, and we thought the worst was over, until around 4am.  I awoke to winds howling so loud, I thought the hotel roof was going to blow off.  I looked out the window, and every tree and power line was blowing sideways.  Then I noticed everything was pitch black. The power was out in the whole area.  

A couple hours later, I got up to the sounds of children running through the halls in their pajamas as if it were Christmas.  There was no coffee- no bagels- no elevators.  The hotel was facing utter chaos because a waterpark resort had no way to keep kids entertained.  I brushed my teeth by the light of my blackberry and tried to click my heels together in hopes of propelling myself back to Chicago.

Thankfully, the power came back on before 11am.  I managed to get my work done, and was back home on a plane before another round of storms showed its face in "tornado alley". 

There really is no place like home.  Thank GOD we're not in Kansas anymore...