It has been almost three weeks since my last post. I have been either sick, worn out or busy every evening for the past 2-3 weeks. I actually wrote part of this post last Friday:
I am sitting here in the living room with no electricity but my laptop still has a good charge. The little battery icon on the taskbar says I have over 4 hours remaining; the only program I’m running is Word and I have the brightness turned down on the screen to save battery life.
We have no electricity because there was a severe thunderstorm this morning with high, straight line winds that knocked out power throughout Licking and the surrounding area. We have about 14 large pine trees down on our property, all victims of saturated ground and the high winds out of the north. We had another tree come down across our neighbor’s fence, the lane, our fence, and snapped the electric line coming to our house.
There are trees down everywhere, roofs and metal awnings twisted and crumpled in town, and debris from trees littering the roads and yards. I was working at the Universal Challenge Center today (it was actually a holiday for me) but the scheduled group was from Licking’s Bridges Alternative School and so I was happy to help out. We also had heavy rain and high winds at the Challenge Center but obviously it was nothing like it was here in Licking.
Dylan called me about 2:00 p.m. to tell me about all the damage. The amazing thing is, that even with more than a dozen trees down, the only damage we had to our property was a couple of fences and a metal gazebo and awning on our deck. Dylan told me we were going to need a bigger saw than our little Poulan with a 16”bar so I told him to go on out to Agri-Enterprises and see what they had. He came home with a big Husqvarna and then when I got home, Ethan Smith had brought a couple more saws and the three of us started cutting. I’m not used to working that hard and the big Huskey got heavy fairly quickly. We didn’t get it all cleaned up but I’ll eventually be able to get everything but the logs cleaned up. I’m not sure yet what I’ll do with the logs.
It is amazingly quiet without electricity. The peepers and crickets are singing their favorite song. I can hear a coyote once in a while and there is a whippoorwill off in the distance. It looks like there will be a full moon or something near it. Hmmm . . . no noise and a full moon; I’ll probably have a hard time drifting off to sleep tonight.
Beginning of what I have written today.
The busyness did not end with the lack of electricity. Saturday was a double-header in baseball at Houston during the day and the Alumni Banquet in the evening. Sunday was Mother’s Day and continued clean-up. Steve Booker brought over a generator which allowed me to use my CPAP for the first time after a couple of nights. It is amazing how poorly I sleep without it. Sunday morning I had woken up with a sore throat and a headache. I was perfectly fine on Monday morning.
Monday evening was the Athletic Reception. Dylan was happy with having received Defensive Player of the Year in basketball. We finally got electricity back on Tuesday. Simple things seemed like luxuries again: lights, coffee maker, refrigeration, things that come on at the touch of a switch. It made me wonder at the depth of my lack of appreciation for the blessings in my life. I find that I am already taking things for granted again, just a few days later.
Tuesday evening I prepared for a trip to Jefferson City on Wednesday to make a presentation to a meeting of the community action directors throughout Missouri and then on to Tan-Tar-A to show the mobile lab at the Missouri Association of Workforce Development Conference. I had to miss the Baccalaureate service at the Church of Christ on Wednesday night.
Today, Thursday, I am in the mobile lab describing our services just outside the entrance where people are taking their smoking break so I’ll probably smoke at least two packs of second-hand smoke today. I have actually had many visitors from people who are interested in the Hughes Net and others who are thinking about setting up something similar in their regions.
Once again, I find myself wishing that I was at home. I still have a tremendous amount of cleanup to do at the house and Dylan’s graduation is this weekend. I am wondering if all of this ceaseless activity will come to a complete stop at sometime in the near future. In any case, I have many pictures to post and a lot of catching up to do. Hopefully my blog posting will return to normal
Dylan and Melony
Dylan after receiving Citizenship Award
Dylan and Kenny, Baseball Playing Mad Scientists
Dylan's Snap of a Snapper
June and J.D.'s mare Fly and New Baby
