As I was coming back from picking up paychecks we got hit with a sudden and severe storm. This was like an instant hurricane. The lightning was flashing constantly and the rain so heavy I almost pulled over several times. As I got closer to my destination I finally lost all visibility and pulled off the main road onto some side roads. I hoped to find a place to park for a while but every road I turned onto was flooded. So I would keep going, hoping that my car wouldn’t flood. I was getting panicky.
I made it to another smaller main road that had a recreation center on it. I figured I could pull into the parking lot there and sit for a while. The cars were creeping along due to the flood, as I was about 1 car length away from the entrance and right in front of a house. I saw a lightning bolt from the corner of my eye that looked to be heading toward me, then everything went white and I heard a loud boom and sparks. The lightning hit a transformer right behind that house. I was freaking out at this point and quickly turned into the rec center. I sat for a while and the rain slowed down a bit, but the lightning didn’t. The whole place was surrounded by trees (lightning magnets) and I was roasting in the car so I decided to try to get back to work. After a few more semi-flooded roads and a couple idiots who almost swamped my car, I finally made it back. Turned on the weather report and they showed the lightning strike map, the entirety of Pinellas County was one big lightning strike. They said there were over 700 strikes in half an hour’s time.
I had made a livejournal post earlier today about some of my thoughts on faith, so it’s entirely possible that God guy might be trying to tell me something.
Bobbio I’m glad you decided to go to Indiana. I am assuming since you posted waaaaaaay early this morning you were up gettin’ ready to fly out. Saying a final farewell to a loved one is always good. The mechanic (he’s a friend) didn’t do me too bad on the price. Course I hate paying anything at all but it wasn’t bad for a clogged up fuel line. Twuck is runnin fine and dandy this mornin’.
Ashes[sup]2[/sup], I know what you mean! I thought nothing would top the scandal at the community fish fry of 1998, but that Jell-O incident was almost not to be believed! Sometimes you can still see lime Jell-O in the sewer drains after a really hard rain. I’m really lookin’ forward to hearing Mr. International Drummer at the grand opening. I do like a good drummin’! I’m glad you’re takin’ Aunt ThedaDelle and Uncle Hollis to the grand opening. It’s awful nice of the Sheriff to let em out of the county lock up so they can go. I hear the Gonzales’ bought matching monogrammed leather thongs to wear. Those two are always the town fashion plates!
Wile E EEK! :eek: I hate driving in thunderstorms. Around here it means flash floods and BIG lightning. The last time I saw a close up lightning strike was last summer when lightning struck the water in my pool. I was on the back porch when it happened. The shriek I let out would have made a five year old girl turn green with envy.
After two weeks of threats, Mother Nature has finally decided to let it rain. And let me tell you, it friggin’ poured this morning.
And with it came the normal Hampton Roads response to that water falling from the sky
“What is this?”
“Is the world ending?”
“And why is my car spinning around in circles when I went through that big puddle that covered the road at 60 miles per hour? Good thing I was on the phone with my girlfriend from college at the time.”
"Why do I need my headlights on? Yes, it’s dark, but it’s not night? "
Once again I am reminded that I live in a part of the country where people have shorter memories than goldfish.
Did the water turn orange? My brother saw lightning hit our pool once and he said the water turned orange. Briefly. I mean, it’s not like it STAYED orange or anything. That’d be weird - swimming in orange water. Sort of like flavorless Kool-Aid or something. But it didn’t, it turned back into water-colored water. So did your water go orange for a while? That’d be cool.
Close lightning strikes are berry berry skerry! :eek: When we lived in our old house, lightning hit one of the pine trees in the back yard. The charge went down the tree, across the yard, took out the spa pump, fried our answering machine and turned the TV screen in the living room lime-jello green. It also took out the nextdoor neighbor’s telephone. Needless to say, the tree expired.
I am taking the afternoon off to go see War of the Worlds with The Princess[sup]TM[/sup]. I plan on being berry berry skerred. Before I get to the thee-A-ter, I gotta go get malled and buy a new coffee grinder. :mad: The Mr. Coffee one I bought a few months ago refuses to work. It has some kinda idiot switch inside what won’t let you grind any beans iffen you are a dumbass and fergit to put the recepticle back on and grind coffee all over yer counter. Only mine won’t work even when it’s on. :mad: Penney’s got a Krups one what ourta be good. I’m gonna see iffen anyone’s got a Braun one cause that’s what my old one was what lasted about eight years.
Anyhoo, swampy, I won’t be chattin’ much this afternoon cause it’s too hard to do from the mall or the movie thee-A-ter.
Nope. Flyin’ tomorrow. This morning’s early post was from a fit of insomnia brought on by the stooopid cat deciding to sit on my face while I slept. Remeber me sayin’ there ain’t a cat born yet that was right in the head?
Last summer, we had a lightning strike that hit our building in The Apartment Complex From Hell. It was traumatic, because the only electronic victim was our cable modem. We didn’t see the bolt hit, but that didn’t matter. The thunder clap went ka-fuckin-boom, and everything shook inside.
The ccolest one I witnessed was one day a few years ago when I was working for the bastards that laid me off (no, I’m not bitter ;-)), and I was coming back from lunch. Across the street is a rundown neighborhood, with a residential power line running behind the first row of houses. A bolt hit one of the poles which just happened to hold a couple of transformers, and they started arcing power phase to power phase. The whole area was lit up in this eerie green light cast by the arc, accompanied by an even weirder hum that drowned out all the other noise, and I was a block and a half away at the time.
DogMom I was too busy shrieking and runnin’ for the back door to notice if my pool turned orange. I saw some stuff in the pool store that you can put in your water to turn it dark blue. I think it’d be cool if it came in other colors. Orange. Or red! OOH! Can you imagine the look on folks’ faces to see red water in a pool! Especially if I had a fake shark fin floating in the water. HEE! Now I want to do this!
Puggy I hate going to the movie theater but I wanna see War of The Worlds. Have fun! Oh and…
BOO!!!
Now you’ve been skeered so you won’t be so skeered at the movie. No need to thank me. Really.
Mr. Anachi hates going, too, so I’m limited to when The Princess and I can agree on a movie. Have you tried going to the new arena style theaters? Much more comfortable than the older style.
I had my windows rolled up due to the torrentialness of the rain so I didn’t smell anything. I did feel my car shake from that thunderclap and several others that weren’t as close. My battery light flickered, too, I wasn’t sure if it was because it was getting wet or it was some electrical thingamawhatsit from the lightning.
A few years ago Papa Tiger and I were driving through a thunderstorm that had traffic slowed waaaay down because of the rain, and all of a sudden,
Ka-BOOM!
Lightning hit a tree nearby … then jumped to another car … then jumped to OUR car :eek: … then on to another car or two before dissipating somewhere else. Not just your ordinary blinding flash, but literally every hair on my body stood on end.
Yeah, it was kinda memorable. Mother Nature does good when she wants to scare the crap out of you, doesn’t she?
Morning again, everyone. Yesterday was busy so I didn’t have time to post a lot. We had a good time with OQDB, and sent him home at the delightfully early hour of 2 am. I hope he got home safe- he lives a couple of hours away. He’s such a sweetheart. OQD got a good one.
Today is bloody hot, and I am going to spend most of today hiding inside doing chores, and then emerge briefly in the evening for a few brutal dance classes. Then I will stagger home and collapse. Today with be good.
Yeah, but they are still full of people who don’t know how to behave in public. That’s why I don’t like going. I hate dropping all that money and not being able to enjoy the movie because people can’t behave themselves.
In other news:
I peed for work today! My name came up for random drug testing, so I had to go to Occupational Health (the place where we go for stuff like this) and pee in a cup. I had peed just before I got told I needed to go drug pee, so I had to drink a big ol’ bottle of water before walkin’ over to OH (it’s just next door). Betwixt the big ol’ bottle of water and the walk, I had to pee but good when I got there! I wonder if that’s gonna be TMI enough for FCM.
AAAAAHHH! I could say so many things here, but I think I have to not flirt with him until Thursday. Maybe Friday… I’ll have to go look it up.
On a more on-topic note, I bought a newspaper subscription yesterday. The guy outside actually receives something from selling them, so, since I know how much it sucks to try to sell things, and I get a 20 dollar wal-mart gift card, I signed up. 7 dollars a month. FOREVER.
Bobbio I have really bad timing. I mean, last week, I ate asparagus three times. Lots of it each time cause I just lurve asparagus and so I bought an especially large bunch of it cause it looked really good in the store that day. Asparagus pee is a hoot! So is Vitamin B12 pee. It’s really, really, yellow.
merrily I hadn’t thought of yellow pool water yet! I wonder if anybody would get in the pool if I dyed the water yellow. Hmmm…
chaoticdonkey ummm… AIR, you are just home for the summer, right? So you subscribed to a newspaper, presumably from your hometown, where you don’t live there most of the year, right? That’s even weirder than me!
