I really like thunderstorms.

Good thing too because I live in Oklahoma and we get our fair share of them. This past Saturday evening we had a doozy of a storm. Lots of lightning, thunder, wind and rain. It was great. What wasn't so great was when lightning caused our transformer to blow and knocked our power out from around 11 pm until 5 am.

The kids were a little freaked out but we got everyone settled in to sleep after the novelty of waving flashlights around wore off. Sleep for the adults was a little tougher because this time of year we have the air conditioner on 24 hours a day. True the thunderstorm had cooled the temps off a bit but once it left we were treated to absolute stillness and humidity. Nasty, sticky humidity. The kind that makes you get up from the bed at 2 am because the person next to you is putting out too much heat. I ended up on the couch which was a tiny bit better but not by much. Mike and I both had a night of crappy sleep.

By the morning our power was back on and that air conditioner was doing its usual bang up job. I thought all was well. Boy...was I wrong. That lovely burst of electricity fried our vcr/dvd burner in the bedroom. The computers were off in the computer room but our battery backups were inexplicably dead. Duncan's computer's power supply was toast and our wireless network router was acting all wonky. Oh...and our phone line was dead.

I spent Sunday morning purchasing new battery backups and a new router. We went to the movies that afternoon (kids and mom: The Ant Bully, Mike and I: Little Miss Sunshine--both movies got big thumbs up from their respective audiences) so Mike didn't get to mess with computer hook ups until that evening. I'm at a complete loss when it comes to messing with why a computer won't work. I can't even remember how big the hard drive on my machine is and E has to correct me every time I use 'computer box' in place of 'cpu'.

Mike is very methodical--maddeningly so at times--and when he finally got the router working properly he discovered that my network card's connector wasn't. That, of course, meant no online time for me that evening. Damn good thing I had that new cell phone.

Today I went and purchased a new network card and hopefully that will allow me to get online some time tonight. If Mike doesn't get stuck in methodical mode...which he probably will. After he gets all this sorted out the poor guy still has to figure out what the heck is going on with our phone line. AT&T's system says everything is fine on their end and I have a bad feeling the electrical surge fried something that will end up being our responsiblity to have fixed. Oh well. Once again that new cell phone comes in handy. I guess I shouldn't feel too bad about dunking the old one in the toilet.

Tamara

Birds of Prey/X-Files

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