We had a major front blow through last night in the midst of high winds that at times exceeded 50mph.
Power to our neighborhood was lost around 11:15pm last night and when I called the city garage the dispatcher/operator stated that there were outages all over the city. [The reason I call every time now is about two years ago during a summer storm I didn't call right away and some 1-2 hours into the outage I called to see if there was an estimate on restoration and they didn't even know our neighborhood was out, so now I call right away.] Our power was restored around 2:20am (based on
the clocks in my house).
The awesome part of the storm last night was when the front was coming through town. My 10 year old daughter and I were in the car heading into town on the west side to grab some dinner for my wife and I after picking up my daughter from Upwards practice. As we were driving pass the last church on Stahlhaber Rd./NW Washington Blvd there was a light blue/green glow in that lit up the sky for a few seconds that was distracting enough that I did not see a small branch in the road. Based on the news article I read this morning I am pretty sure that this light was from two poles that carry high voltage lines being snapped by the high wind over by the Freshman School.
However, as we climbed the hill on NW Washington Blvd, (by the model home?) just before coming between Wal-Mart and Lowe’s we both saw another light blue/green glowing ball over in the direction of the power plant by the river that lit up the entire sky for a couple seconds and then went out – when it went out the city seems extremely dark but as we crested the hill and I was surprised to see lights on the businesses on Main street. I called home to see if we still had power and my wife reported that the
lights had dimmed down but didn’t go all the way out. My daughter was lamenting the fact that she didn’t have a camera/camcorder as that light was really cool.
I confirmed with the lady at the Arby’s drive through that they power/lights had just dimmed but not completely gone out. We got our order and continued home, noticing a number of small branches and twigs in the road at various locations.
Once home the power flickered once or twice but it was more of the small surge you have when the A/C kicks in during the summer. The kids freaked out a bit but we got them off to bed (except for the 2 almost 3 year old – who has developed a fear of shadows in the last few weeks). A little bit after 11 there was a quick complete drop that occurred – and I closed up my computer and unplugged it and shut off my external hard drive and I was just about to stand and grab a flashlight when the power went completely out about 11:15 and stayed that way until some time after 2. I woke up about 3 a noticed that we only left one light on that was shining brightly in the living room – I just left it as I didn’t want to rouse the dog and have to step outside.
I really wish I would have had a way to capture that glowing ball of light as it was simply awesome!
Lifechurch.tv’s Craig Groeschel had an ‘off the record’ interview with the old Father of Lies and pulled a fast one by actually having the camera’s rolling. There is a lot of truth in this little video, hope we can use it someday at Journey.
[warning: this is a sponsored post, the link is to a site that I consider soft core porn - if you are trying to keep your eyes clean then please don't follow the link.]
True Story – I was in Wal-Mart over the weekend getting some necessary items (RX for one of the kids and some Diet Rite Black Cherry) and there was a ‘girl’ late teens, early twenty wearing a corset over her clothes. I thought maybe this was a back brace but given the look I am pretty sure it wasn’t.
With V-Day on its way you may be considering corsets or some other skimpy thing for your spouse (yes they have stuff for guys too – ewww) I would recommend that you check out PajamaGram instead, they have high quality stuff and they don’t have soft porn on their site.
Today is the 22 anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
I was in fourth grade on January 28, 1986 – we were in between classes with a study period when the school secretary walked into our room and went to the teachers desk (the school secretary was NEVER seen outside the office, with the exception of the lunch room) where she told our teacher the news and then left. Our teacher then rose and got everyone’s attention and made the announcement. The eight-grade class watched the disaster live on TV that morning. I don’t remember the rest of the school day. But I remember at home that night watching clip after clip of the launch and the explosion as news commentators tried to find someone who could make sense of what happened.
Years later I read parts of the Rogers Commission Report, a couple of years ago in a college course the professor used a memo discovered during the Rogers Commission as an example of a poorly written memo. The memo brought up concerns about O-ring failure and specific concerns about extreme temperatures but the first paragraph of the memo was all fluff about a great site visit and how there were no major discoveries, and then they went into details of some concerns that would become major issues.
I do own a copy of DVD, “NASA, Vol. 2 – Challenger, Disaster and Investigation/NASA, The 25th Year” which covers the Challenger disaster and the Rogers Commission findings. Yes, I am a nerd.
We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of Earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’
not sure how much shopping you do online.
we are frequent customers of amazon, eBay, newegg, and even target.com – some of the deals that you can find are just awesome.
I just discovered craigslist a few days ago – I had heard of it but had never been to the site (the first item that I found that I was interested in was a scam btw – make sure you deal locally!). Another site that I have not visited even though I heard commercials for is overstock.com but I found that you can get Overstock coupons to save even more of the great prices that they have. will have to keep that in mind for christmas and birthdays this year.
no, we are not moving (at least not anytime soon)
when we moved into our current house we both said that the next time we move we will hire movers. not sure if it would be New York movers as I am sure we will be staying local, at least that is the plan – and if we were to move out of the area I am pretty sure it would not be to New York. Tennessee is probably more likely.
Our house is on the somewhat dull side. We have some good decorations and family photos on the walls, but we don’t have much ‘art’ more so for a lack of $$$. One idea that we have thrown around would be to decorate our walls with rare movie posters. We would have to have an original star wars but some of our favorites would also include breakfast at tiffany’s, 8mile, gone with the wind, at least one james bond and the crow. Maybe we should stop putting it off, we have a great space to hang a bunch of posters in the hallway/stairs to the second floor. hmmm, might have to tape some of our more artsy friends for some creative input.
remember those medic-alert commercials back in the 80s/90s – they were almost as dumb as the retro commercials are now. I know that for our senior population this is an important issue. But almost as important as getting the help that you need when you need it, is making sure that medical professionals know about certain conditions especially when you can’t speak. That is where medical alert bracelets come into the mix. The surprising thing is that you can get some really high quality jewelry that notifies medical personnel of your condition that looks much better than the cheap bracelets that you can buy on the drug store counter.
I have been growing out my hair for over the past year now. In October I am planning on officiating at a wedding for a friend of ours. The wedding will be on Halloween and is a costume wedding – hence the reason for growing out my hair (I just needed a good excuse).
Today I wore my ‘weekend’ hair to the office (it looks like a jheri curl). Any way – while heating up my beloved black beans and rice for lunch an office friend came back in and asked if I had ever seen the movie, “The Crow” because my hair looked like the main character – Eric Draven.
I just smiled.
I have been a huge fan of “The Crow” and Eric Draven since I saw it in 1994. So much so that my internet handle for many years was ‘Draven’. That is who I am planning to officiate over the wedding as. (I just need to drop some pounds so I look more like Eric rather than Matt Foley.)
Actually I was just think about how it had been a while since I watched the movie, I will have to watch it over the weekend, on my mac though – not really a kid friendly movie.
As one who has claimed to enjoy staying in hotels. I am beginning to wonder if I would still enjoy it. Now, I am not planning to run to any Branson hotels to test out my theory but ever since we got a Sleep Number Bed a few years ago I am rather fond of sleeping in my bed, set to my sleep number. Maybe they have some Select Comfort beds in Branson, I know they do in Merrillville.