The trip was fairly uneventful. (I got in late in the day yesterday, combination of a delayed train, a long wait at the East Texas Burger Company for lunch, and shopping for groceries and traffic).
My mom liked her birthday gifts (a National Parks themed crossword puzzle book and a gift certificate to her favorite long-time garden shop, she already spent some of it). She thanked me for taking out the time for a long visit but frankly I know all too well it won't be TOO very many years (sadly) that I won't be taking this trip any more, so when I can do a longer visit I want to.
I finished a couple things, that will be coming later.
The biggest thing that happened was a few days after I got up there, I had just gone to bed and a text came in from my neighbor across the street: "Are you OK? Call me if you need anything" and I thought "weird, maybe she didn't realize I was out of town and was worrying that I was sick or something. "
So I texted her back that I was in Illinois, and was anything going on
And then she texted back the thing you don't want to see: "Call me"
My stomach sank, my first thought was either my house was on fire or there had been direct violence in my street. But I called, even though it was like 10 at night.
It turns out lightning struck "behind my house" (what she thought at first) and her husband was out talking with the firefighters. All the power was out in the neighborhood of course. She said it looked like nothing was on fire but didn't know anything more. So I thanked her and asked her to text me the next day when she knew more.
I didn't sleep well that night because I thought maybe something came down on my roof, or there was a power surge that fried my electronics, or there was damage that was unseen.
The next morning I hadn't heard anything by 9 so I texted my friend Dana - who is retired and generally willing to help out - and explained and asked if she could run over to my place and see what was going on. A few minutes later she called me - lots of work trucks, both OG and E and a tree trimming company, in the street, she couldn't park near my house.
and at first she confused the neighbor to the south's house with mine and said "the house itself is okay but there's a burn scar in the backyard from the snapped power line, and there's a tree down on the garage, and the wood fence to the east is all damaged" and that was where I was like "hold up" because I have a wood fence on the north and south sides, but a crummy old chain-link fence that I need to replace on the east side.. And then she asked "has your garage door always been crooked" and I said "no, but my neighbor's is" and she said "wait" and then "Oh.. I'm looking at the house south of yours, hang on"
And she looked in my backyard. No damage there. Nothing had happened other than the power and cable being knocked out. So I missed something potentially bad. (And OG and E indicated by text that my power was back on by 6 pm, so I presume everything in the freezer is still safe to use; it was only out for about 20 hours and the freezer was chock full and closed.)
It turned out that lightning hit a TREE near the house to the south of mine, and a transformer also exploded (that's what took the power out, and the tree coming down snapped the power line). I'm not sure if the bolt went down into the asphalt in the alley or not; I've not gone to look on the grounds that it's probably unsafe to walk under a tree that's damaged and partly down (I can see it from my backyard).
I admit I was also concerned about my car, parked out in the open; I knew there had been hailstorms in east Texas but apparently not one where I had it parked.. It just had a layer of very fine grey dust on it, probably from stuff blowing in from fields (I took it through the car wash today after I mowed my lawn, which was pretty high).
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