Lightning

Last night, it was maybe 9 or 9:30 p.m. In the distance, we heard thunder. It wasn’t loud. It didn’t sound angry. Vince said “We’d better get the dogs out before it starts raining again.” I took Oscar out. Then Vince took Rita out and I got Cooper’s harness and was on my way out with him. Vince had just stepped back onto the patio and I was just stepping from the garage on
to the patio and y’all . . lightning struck somewhere very, very near our house. It was the brightest flash I have ever seen. Remember the old cameras with the cube that would flash? It was like that times 100. And then what sounded like an explosion of thunder. That was the loudest thing I believe I have ever heard. Vince wasn’t facing the lightning strike like I was but he said he saw BRIGHT light. He covered his head with his arms and hunched way down like he would if a bomb went off. As scared as I was, it made me laugh seeing the position he got into. We all ran back inside. Forget taking Cooper out.

It never rained after all that and there was no more thunder. I came in and actually kept expecting a smoke alarm to go off because I felt certain our house had been struck but, thankfully, no smoke alarm. As soon as I sat down I noticed all the lights were off on the router and modem. I said “I think our internet is a victim of the lightning strike.” Yep, even with a heavy duty surge protector, the modem and router were toast. Vince was afraid the TV and receiver were ruined but they were not. I was hoping the printer was ruined but . . not my luck.

I checked the freezers and fridges and they were fine. When I started to get in the shower, I checked the water heater and water softener and they were fine. They are not in the bathroom but getting in the shower made me think to make sure we had hot water. We did.

We have our internet through Mediacom and Vince called them this morning and they had someone out here about 10 a.m. I was so happy to see them!

They checked out all the lines and they were fine. They checked the equipment and said there was no hope for either the modem or the router. We don’t use their equipment so then we had to run to Best Buy for new equipment.

Vince had asked one of the neighbors if their internet was out, when we didn’t know it was just us. He said no but that about scared him to death! We saw another neighbor in town and they said the same thing. We were both thinking . . you should have been outside when it happened! Truly, I’m very careful about going out in thunder/lightning and even though we heard thunder once off in the distance, this was not what I would call a thunderstorm but I will be more careful from now on and you can bet, if there’s a chance of a storm, we won’t both go outside at the same time. Don’t want to leave orphan dogs!

While outside with the dogs before we left to go town, I noticed one of the radon fans wasn’t working. the lightning also got a few of the GFI outlets on the outside of one corner of the house so the electrician will get to us in a week or so. They’re busy and that’s ok . . not affecting anything we can’t live without. Vince got out a big extension cord and plugged the fan into a different outlet. Vince is going to have all the outside GFI outlets replaced when the electricians come. A few of them have been replaced but the one upstairs where I plug the smoker in . . that one works for a few weeks and then I go to smoke something and first thing you know, it’s off and that messes up my dinner time. Vince says the GFI outlets don’t last forever so . . an outlet that doesn’t work all the time is pretty worthless. Vince can replace them and has replaced some of them but he doesn’t like messing with electrical issues.

It was kinda funny but . . sad for others . . when Vince was in Best Buy, they came over the speaker and asked the employees to restock the routers and modems, they were going to need them today. Vince said they told him he was the third one to buy a router and modem because of the storm and they hadn’t been open even an hour yet. Everything is installed and working so we’re all good. And, we’re both thankful we weren’t injured last night.