Act of God Provides Day Off

Don't know if anyone outside the Washington, DC area heard about the wild thunderstorms and tornadoes we got yesterday. It was pretty cool and scary all at the same time.

It all started rolling in around 3:00 p.m. When I went to microwave my lunch I noticed in the sky light that the sky was getting dark. When I emerged from the kitchen, the secretary exclaimed "Oh My!" I looked out the window to see the trees thrashing around violently as the sound of pounding rain drops hitting the sky light. (yes, I was eating lunch at 3 p.m. - - I had stuff I had to take care of so eating and going to the bathroom were put on hold for most of the day). I walked back to my desk with my lunch, we sit in a windowless area, and told everyone that a really bad storm was rolling in. As if on queue, the lights began to flicker.

By the way, why do women always scream when the lights flicker on and off?

I can tell you, I've never experienced the flickering lights. Its only something I've seen watching horror movies. Someone did comment that it was reminding them of the Exorcist.

Everyone was quickly trying to save thing on the computers and then POP! We were engulfed in complete darkness. Where the heck were the emergency lights?

It was so dark outside that light from the sky light and from the window by the conference room wasn't penetrating over our cubicle walls. I think the last time I had experienced that kind of darkness was when I toured some cave and they turned the lights out. I carefully grabbed my lunch and headed toward the conference room hallway where the window was.

HOLY COW!

The rain was coming down so hard and the wind was so strong, I couldn't even see the trees in the courtyard. It was like someone was dosing the windows with a fire hose. The lightening was AMAZING! I have never seen lightening like that during the day.

The office chief scurried past me and the five men who had joined me at the window to watch nature's show.

"Get away from the windows!" she warned, "You may get struck by lightening."

Well, the storm eventually blew over but the power didn't come back on. We sat around near the windows and played finger football (remember that game you used to play in elementary school with paper folded into a triangle?) The tech guys sat by the window overlooking the parking garage and timed how long it took a car to get out of the garage and onto the street (half an hour). We were just sitting around basically because we'd rather be sitting with people than in our cars waiting in horrible long lines of traffic. I left at 5:15, two hours later, I was finally home.

I had power at home.

This morning, while getting ready for work, my boss called to tell me our office still didn't have power so we weren't to come in. That really stinks, sort of, because I had a lot of stuff that needed to get done. But you know what, nothing I can do. So I used the time to get the things around my house in order. I did all of my laundry and ironed all of my clothes. It took me four hours to complete all of my ironing! I guess that is what I get for letting a months worth of clothes pile up.

Then I rescued a baby bird (fledgling - - half down half feathers and not able to fly yet) that had fallen from its tree. Let me just tell you how stressful that was. Poor little guy. I scooped him up in a shoe box and climbed my neighbor's tree as high as I could go, opened the box and it hopped out and onto a branch. I watched to make sure the adult birds came to it and they did, so hopefully it makes it.

I was then Suzy Homemaker and went grocery shopping and made fruit salad and regular salads to take to work with me and have through the weekend. Must eat healthy!

Luckily, I won't have to work this weekend as there was a planned power outage so they could install cooling systems for a server room. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to enjoy the 90 degree weather up at the pool!

Oh and I have one heck of a caffeine withdrawal headache this evening. So, I am off to take Tylenol and go to bed.