Lightning Strike

We woke early Sunday morning to the sounds of thunder and winds. I fretted for my screen house which came through the storm just fine. The storm lasted for hours and we finally got up at about 6:00. The rain came down hard and there was lots of thunder and lightening. I still find myself counting the seconds between the lightening and the bang as I have since I was little. 5 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi. We both jumped when the flash and the bang came at the same time.

The power stayed on. I looked out and couldn’t see any smoldering trees or downed limbs. When the storm seemed to be waning we both tried to log onto our computers only to find that we had no cable connection. We just had the cable company out on Tuesday because of problems with our internet service. A quick check of the TV and we realized that the cable really was out.

After the rain stopped I went out and looked up and down the road. No blackened poles. I puttered in the garden. When there was no sign of a repair crew by 11:00 I decided to call and report that we were out. Our phone service is also through the cable so I got out my cell phone, which I only have for emergencies and which only works if I am out in the yard. So of course it started to rain again. I managed to get a signal standing by the back door and used up 10 of my precious minutes only to be told that they had no other reports of outages in our area and that they’d send someone out Monday afternoon.

Now John and I don’t watch much TV so we only have basic cable. But we are on the internet for hours every day. We read the newspaper online. He gets his sports fix online. I have my genealogy sites.

So how did we spend our time? I spent time weeding and adding twine to the morning glory teepee. I moved plants and mulched. I cleaned out most of the room that we would use as a den if it didn’t end up as a catch all room. We played a board game which we rarely do when it’s just the two of us. I cleaned up files on my computer and got rid of a ton of out of date stuff. I backed up my genealogy files and John then downloaded them to his computer so that they are twice backed up. He got the ancient TV in the den to work with the antennae.

Monday the cable guy showed up as promised. We learned from him that the lightening struck at the neighbors down the road and burned down his shed which surprised us. We never smelled smoke and we didn’t hear any fire trucks. Turns out that most of the houses in our area lost their cable, so much for no outage in our area. The lightening must have traveled down the cable line and phone lines. Our trap was fried as was a cable closer to the house. The phone company repair truck was here too and since we don’t have their service they must have been checking the line all the way down the road.

The canal system is still closed in our area and there are more flood gates open than you would normally see this time of year but still no real flooding here. My plants are thriving. It is supposed to rain most of the day here but so far we're dry. The areas southeast of us haven’t been so lucky. They got more rain both Sunday and Monday. Right now it looks like there is more headed their way.