Big Storm

About five minutes before we left work yesterday, we noticed it was completely black outside. We all crowded around the shop door (our only window to the outside world) and watched for what we knew was coming. Sure enough, within a couple of minutes the skies opened up. The rain was so thick that we almost could not see our cars on the other side of the parking lot. Dave had his son along, so he sent him out to get his truck and as he was pulling up to the door we heard a new sound, "Tap, tap, taptap, bang, bang bang bang bang!" Yes, the rain had turned to hail and now was pelting Dave's beautiful new truck. We all stood there watching, waiting for the storm to die down... but it never did. Eventually some made the run to their cars, but Dan and I decided to cover up a bit before leaving. So with our upper-bodies stuffed into clear bags, we made our run. Dan had it easy and jumped inside the passenger door (we carpool, by the way). But my door handle is broken, so I had to open the back door and try and get my arms out from under the bag I was inside and reach forward and open the front door from the inside. By the time I got inside my pants were soaked through. We sat back, got our breath, and set off.

I called Hannah to let her know we would be late, I was NOT going to hurry in that weather. We slowly made our way down the hill, trudging through large puddles and small rivers running across the road. At one point we had to squeeze through on the other side of the road because a large limb had fallen off a tree. But the most interesting part of the trip was the shockingly bright orange fire burning in the distance. We only saw it briefly, but it just looked like a fire burning farther down the hill, but somehow up in the sky. It must have been a transformer, and probably partly responsible for the power outage which is still going (Luckily we have a good generator). So in the end, we safely made it home, with only our pants wet. There was only one traffic light out along the way, but people were not following the rules and were blazing through it as if it were a blinking yellow light. That was annoying.

So now this morning I got to work to find that we had flooded out (this is what happens when you work in a basement). As result, I have spent the better part of this morning vacuuming and mopping up water. But that is the easy part. Now I need to empty boxes and dry off the contents, clean off cages that were on the floor, and all sorts of other fun stuff. This is shaping up to be quite an interesting day.