Lightning Strike!

What are the chances? Friday night, about 5:30, we sit down to some killer turkey tacos. Outside our door is a viscious thunderstorm brewing. As we're heating up the kid's peas, we hear a crash of thunder and observe a flash of lightning. It sounded as if the microwave exploded. It didn't. Then the power went out. We continued eating our tacos. Frankie was unfazed, Suze was relentless. She was barking wildly. We then noticed on the porch, a gang of kind neighbors furiously pounding on our door yelling to us that our house was on fire. Smoke was billowing out the roof they cried. We were horrified.

Trish grabbed the dog and I grabbed Frankie and we ran to the front porch. It was pouring rain outside and our house indeed smelled like it was on fire. Trish and the dog ran next door. I tossed Frankie to our dear neighbor Donna for safe keeping, called 911, posted another neighbor on the porch to direct the firefighters, ran into the house, consumed another taco (they were really good) and then ran quickly to the attic to find the fire. Couldn't find any.

The fire department quickly showed up and ran to the attic with me. I couldn't believe how much they wiped their feet on the welcome mat. Using their nifty thermal imaging cameras (after replacing a dead battery) they isolated the strike. Lightning hit and obliterated about twenty slate shingles from our roof. Just beneath the roof line lay an electrical circuit that was the target. Fortunately, the downpour prevented any fire from developing.

This past weekend, we've been dealing with the consequences. Appliances don't work, the phones don't work, the washing machine is dead, the computer speakers don't work, our cable modem got zapped, etc.

Inconvenient but hardly tragic. We had help from nearly every neighbor on the street (one even did our laundry last night!) and the roof may even get repaired today. We're shaken but lucky.

...and Vlad, he was just hanging out in the basement waiting for everyone to leave his home. He was fine too.

Just to recap, we're fine, we have plenty of kind offers for help and don't really need anything, but thanks for your concern.