Long day, longer night

It is about time to say farewell to the summer of 2007. It was hot, rainy, busy, leisurely and, as any other summer, beautiful. What can be better then long days, when it's still daylight outside when you leave your work, especially if your workplace is underground, basement or operating room - no windows, no ideas about the outside world. And sometimes, it is important to inquire about the weather before you leave for home.
I was on long, outofthecountry, vacation trip and came back last Saturday. The neighbourhood looked as if it were part of the Baghdad's outside of the "green zone", recently blown up suburb. Trees were up side down, some leaning against the houses, broken in several pieces. Dirt and water are everywhere. What the hell!? The explanations came from the cab driver and the neighbours - last Thursday there was an unusually strong wind, tornado, monsoon, or whatever that had never been seen or heard of before in Chicago area. Our house was OK - minimal basement flooding, no power, backyard is a mess. Stories started coming in, one worse then another, about what really had happened. The best was my buddy's from work:
"I did eleven cases on Thursday and had no clue what was happening outside. At about 3 or 4pm monitors in the OR were acting up - flickering, turning on and off, but nothing major, nobody was in any danger. I thought it was just some power shortage and didn't take it as anything serious. My wife paged me several times, but i was busy and couldn't call her back right away. When I did call her cell was not working, I thought she had forgot to charge it (again!). Finally, about 9pm, my day was over. I was tired, hungry and ready for a beer. As I came out onto the parking lot and headed towards my car, I did notice an unusually large amount of water running on the street, I jumped across all these puddles and little rivers and approached my car just to find out it was not my car at all. You know, I usually park at the same spot every day. And I did leave my car there that morning. What was more puzzling there was another car there on my spot, the same model as mine, the same color with different plates and interior colors. Imagine my thoughts: "Someone stole my car and parked another car of the same model and color into my spot, but why? What, if anything, am I gonna to say to the police?" I was standing there for about a minute or so, when one of our orthopads came running from the other side of the parking lot: "Ah..! Here it is!" He opened what supposed to be my car with his remote keys. Astonished I asked him :"Do you know where my car is, I left it here this morning?" "Look around, buddy, that monsoon shuffled the cars around, some got smashed really bad". I looked around and noticed that the cars on the parking lot were all over the place. I found mine not that far away, it was OK, just one mirror was gone. At home I found out we had our basement flooded, carpet screwed up and some other damage, but nothing had made that much impression on me as my hospital parking lot adventure - looking at exactly the same car as mine on exactly the same spot I had left mine, but it was not mine! Stuff like that makes people crazy!"