Argh!

Hello All!

I had a lovely post all ready for today.

I would have been reading your blogs this weekend.

I would have been commenting on your posts this past weekend and I would have answered the posts made on my site.

I would have done all of the above, if my house had not received a lightning strike on Sunday.

We had a lovely Sunday down at the beach. Headed home and noticed the dark clouds over our area of wonderful Florida.

My poor baby Cesar, (20# Shih Tzu) had been home alone all day, so instead of having a nice Mexican dinner that I had been craving all week, we headed home to "save the dog". By saving the dog I mean, my dog despises fireworks, sirens, and thunderstorms. He has been known to scratch and eat his way through doors to escape whatever room he is in when a storm is in the area.

The bright side of that is he does start whining before we even know there is something coming. So it gives me a heads up.

Anyway, back to my story. We arrive home just as the huge, fat rain drops are beginning to hit the car. Now, we are driving Not A Grampy's vehicle, yes the one from this post, which has it's own spot in the garage and for some reason is not allowed to go through water puddles, or get large, fat raindrops on it. So I was let out of the car in the driveway, to dash through these huge, fat raindrops to enter the home. (and do I truly believe the reason Not A Grampy wanted to rush home was to rescue the dog? No, I know it was really because of the damn car)

We do arrive home before the heart of the storm hits. Let me tell you, it hit hard again. Florida is know for their lightning storms. In fact, we are quite famous for them.

To make a long story short, we received a lightning strike that took out my phone lines, modem, all the ceiling fans in the house, garage door opener, alarm system. sprinkler system, coffee maker, and (sob) laptop.

Did you know that when your alarm system gets struck by lightning, the alarm goes off and you can't turn it off? It is especially hard when the control panel is blank and the phone line is dead, so the monitoring company cannot override it. That was 18 minutes of shrieking. (the alarm system, not me. I was shrieking when I discovered the laptop dead)

Thank you to Progress Energy, our power company, because they talked us into a surge protection system that covers all of the large appliances. While we smell melting plastic in the kitchen/living room area of the house, we have not discovered any other damage.

So, if I am kind of slow responding to comments, or I don't leave as many messages, it is because our cable company has me on a waiting list to come out and determine if it is my fault or if it was an act of nature. Then the phone company will be out sometime, someday between 8 am and 7 pm.....

Pray for me! Wine with no internet. Wine with no blogging...life can be so cruel...