what a storm!

We really had a thunderstorm last night!  Only thing missing was hail  (thank goodness).  The skinny, tall trees out back whipped around and around, making me glad they are down the hill, not near my house.  If my plum tree in the front yard had been still standing, it would have gone over again, for sure.  Speaking of that tree, the trunk and roots are now in my car, waiting to be taken to the landfill this AM.   This storm was unique in that we actually lost power for about 7 hours!  Our electric cables are buried, so our development seldom loses power.  This is only the second time since I've lived here (9 years).  My friend Patty and I went out to eat at about 7 PM.  Our whole area was out, but as we drove south on route 1, there were areas with power and others with none.  Places where traffic lights were out swarmed with traffic control officers equipped with flashing lights, barrels and suchlike.  People making left turns could just forget about it.  In several places, they had closed the roads.  When we got to south Laurel (about 5 miles from my house), lights were on, so we stopped where there were restaurants.  Steak house had a 60 minute wait; Applebee's posted 2 hours!  We drove across the street to a Chinese place which was less crowded.  We were seated after about 10 minutes.  However, they had only two wait persons and the manager who was taking orders for take out, clearing tables and doing whatever he could to move things along.  It was 15 minutes before they took our order and another half hour before food came.  It was 9 by then and we were HUNGRY!  The food was delicious, as usual and we were really glad to be in a place with A/C.

On the way home, we noticed most places were lit, so we were very hopeful about our homes.  When we got there - everybody in the development had lights, except out street!  What a didisappointment!  I had a flashlight, so searched for candles, lit a few and tried to do a crossword puzzle by flash-light.  Not a success.  I had just given up and gone up to bed when the power came on at 10:30 PM.  So then I got dressed and wandered around the house, looking for things that needed to be reset.  There are a lot of them!  I still haven't tackled the clock on the TV.  I'll have to read the booklet to do that, unfortunately.  The saddest thing is that because the refrigerator probably got too warm, I'll have to throw away the leftover Mu-shi pork!

My family starts arriving tomorrow night.  I probably won't blog much while they are here.  So if there are no new entries for a while, just think of what a wonderful time I am having with my daughter, son-in-law, 3 grandchildren, son and daughter-in-law.