Today was a rainy day. The news channel said we got about 33/100s of an inch but our rain gauge said a little more than an inch. Dale and I were sitting on the back porch enjoying the rain when all of a sudden there was a flash of lightening and a clap of thunder that sounded like a rifle going off next to my head. The flash seemed like it was in the next door neighbor’s yard. I jumped out of my chair so fast I nearly knocked it over though I don’t know what I thought I was doing. Maybe for a second I was going to try to outrun the lightening. Dale was amused to say the least. The outcome was that our house and two other had their phones knocked out. The man next door lost the power supply on his computer. Thankfully mine was uplugged including the modem. Jessica had a report to finish and I needed to do some cleaning in the computer lab at school so I took her up there and while I was there I called the phone company. Like everything else these days you don’t get to speak with a human. According to their little online test there was no problem in our line. They suggested that you unplug all phones and answering machines and then start plugging everything back in one at a time to test all the equipment. When we got home I did what they suggested and nothing worked. Dale had some wire and rigged something up outside. He thinks the little circuit board in their box is fried. We have phone and internet now. It’s a good thing I married an electrician. I don’t actually know what the lightening hit and the only thing I can figure is that it either ran along the ground or the air around us just got charged. Our answering machine is dead but everything else seems okay.

After that we decided to go for a ride and see what was going on in the rest of town. The storm had passed and we were restless. We drove around town and didn’t see any more storm damage but as we were driving home we passed the hospital and both parking lots were empty except for about a dozen state patrol cars and an ambulance. The police had all the entrances to the hospital parking lots blocked. I stopped at the Exxon station before we went home and mentioned it to the girl behind the counter. She told me the Pakistani President had been here visiting his nephew and had some sort of heart attack. I thought this had to be some sort of mistake and then the news this evening said the Pakistani President had been visiting in northeast Texas today including a stop in Paris. They didn’t mention anything about the hospital but the two pieces of information were an awfully big coincidence. Maybe the news tonight will be a little more forthcoming. All in all it was a pretty strange day.