This morning I had awakened and was listening to the rumble of thunder when there was a huge lightning flash and the loudest crack of thunder I've heard in years. My thoughts flew immediately to Lucky, our dog who is quite scared of thunderstorms, and Philip's new kitten in the entryway. I went to see how they were doing, Tico started meowing, and I brought her down to Philip, who was sleeping in the basement because of the heat and humidity. When I went back upstairs, I noticed that the garage door was fully closed, so went to let the dogs out - but they weren't there. I saw Lucky sitting under the eaves at the other doorway and let him into the entryway - poor thing! Shadow (the other dog) was nowhere to be seen; I figured she had gone into the brick garage.
"My" computer beeped at me and had an orange light, so I pushed the power button and it went off. That concerned me a little, but I spent some quiet time with the Lord, then woke Sarah and Philip to do chores in the barn. Pete is gone this week, so they are in charge of the turkeys. When I turned the computer on, it beeped in that orange sort of way again. Yesterday I determined to transfer all the pictures and videos onto the expansion drive we have, so they would be easily transportable - but I didn't get it done yesterday. I don't think Carbonite backs up all videos, so the worst case scenario here is that the computer is totally fried and all the videos are lost. I pray that's not the case!
I tried to get email and my online task list on the other computer, but Internet connectivity is very low. Soon I discovered that the phones aren't working - the line must be dead and it appears to have fried our answering machine too. The other extensions work but are not connected, but the main one won't turn on. My best guess is that a surge came through the phone line and knocked out the phone, the Internet router, and my computer, which is connected by cable to the router. That would explain why the other things plugged into the same outlets work, and the other computer is OK (it's connected by WiFi). At this moment, I'm praying that either Carbonite backed up the videos or the hard drive is OK. Lord, Thy will be done…this wouldn't be the first time we lost a bunch of video footage.
As Sarah and Philip were leaving for the barn, Chris, our neighbor boy, came over with Shadow, who had taken refuge in their garage. I mentioned to Sarah that she really needed to leave the garage door partially open so the dogs could get in and out. She insisted that she had left it open and left Shadow in the entryway with the kitten for company. When we tried to open the garage door, it wouldn't budge. I remembered it being locked one time, so we spent several minutes trying to figure out how to unlock it; then Philip (accidentally?) pushed the automatic opener, and the door opened! We gawked at each other while it went up, then back and forth a couple of times, and finally stopped just far enough so the car could get out. I pulled the car out - better to have it stuck outside than inside - and after several minutes, the door shut itself. It opened itself later, and then I unplugged the Lift Master.
Now I've discovered that the phone line is working, the Internet is working, but our answering machine/extension phone system is not, and I'm about to try the computer again. The power of nature is displayed once more!
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