China wins: 223-220. We finished just two dropped batons behind.
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One of the most knowledgeable writers I've ever met sent the following story from The Associated Press. Boys and girls, study close the italicized phrases as great examples of what to avoid ("Hey, Scheske, we get enough such lessons reading TDE!"):
Tropical Storm Fay's path Saturday crossing the Florida Panhandle vaulted the stubborn weather system into the record books.
The tropical storm crossed over the central Florida Panhandle at 5 a.m., the first in recorded history to hit the state with such intensity four different times.
George Sweat, 46, searches for his valuables after a large pine tree fell on his home, as girlfriend Peggy Mash, 53, played on her couch with her two cats, at right, during Tropical Storm Fay Friday in Hawthorne, Fla. Residents of the Ranch Motel RV Park and Campground rushed to save the woman, comforting her until rescue crews arrived.
The center of the storm was reported to be over the Florida panhandle about 15 miles north-northeast of Apalachicola, Fla., according to the National Weather Service's National Hurricane Center.
Fay was expected to be near or over the western Florida Panhandle's coast Saturday and near or over the coast of Mississippi and Alabama on Sunday, the center said.
Though Fay never materialized into a hurricane, its zigzagging downpours have been plenty punishing.
At least six people in Florida were dead from the storm, state officials said, and two more deaths reported Friday were believed to be Fay-related. The state attributed an additional death, before the storm hit, to hurricane preparedness after a man testing generators died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
''The damage from Fay is a reminder that a tropical storm does not have to reach a hurricane level to be dangerous and cause significant damage,'' said Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who toured flooded communities this week.
Crist on Friday asked the White House to elevate the disaster declaration President Bush issued to a major disaster declaration. Crist said the storm damaged 1,572 homes in Brevard County alone, dropping 25 inches of rain in Melbourne.
Counties in the Panhandle -- including Bay, Escambia and Walton -- opened their emergency operations centers Friday in preparation for the storm's expected arrival there. To Florida's relief, forecasters expect Fay to weaken over the weekend and finally blow away before losing steam in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
In Steinhatchee, just south of Florida's Big Bend, bartender Dana Watson said she was bracing for a possible drenching. ''It's moving real slow. We're waiting. We're just waiting.''
In an area that can flood badly when high tide rolls in during a bad storm, she said most people remain prepared. ''We've all got our generators filled up with gas and oil and our nonperishable food,'' Watson said.
At 5 a.m. Saturday, the center of the storm was moving west near 7 mph with sustained winds near 45 mph. The storm was expected to keep its strength and remain a tropical storm into Sunday.
Meanwhile, heavy rain in Fay's wake were causing widespread flooding across the Jacksonville area, near the storm's third landfall. Forecasters said some areas of Duval County had received up to 20 inches, and authorities reported an unknown number of homes and businesses flooded.
Farther south in Florida, some of the hardest-hit areas got an encouraging sign as the floods receded. Days earlier, 4 feet of water made roads look like rivers in Melbourne.
''This is a welcome sight,'' said Ron Salvatore, 69, who stood in his driveway Friday morning boiling coffee on a propane grill and surveyed a dry street. Salvatore and his wife Terry, 59, had been stuck in the house since Tuesday because water surrounded their home.
Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty said so far nearly 4,000 flood claims from Fay had been filed. Fay has been an unusual storm, even by Florida standards. It set sights on the state last Sunday and first made landfall in the Florida Keys on Monday. The storm then headed out over open water again before hitting a second time near Naples on the southwest coast. It limped across the state, popped back out into the Atlantic Ocean and struck again near Flagler Beach on the central coast. It was the first storm in almost 50 years to make three landfalls in the state, as most hit and exit within a day or two.
My friend added to his email: "Note: I can't supply a link to this because someone at AP rewrote this masterpiece fixing most (not all) of the clunkers. Dang!" He later found the link and sent it to me, along with the unexpurgated version, but the link had already been disabled by the time I was able to try it.
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Goodness help us, but this story could've been worse . . . a lot worse: A 61-year-old woman gave birth to her own grandchild . . . using an egg donated by her daughter, a clinic in Japan has said.
