Friday Night Miscellany

It's warm and humid and the outdoors is calling. This will be short - very short. Last night it stormed like all get out about 3 in the morning, and kept me up with non-stop thunder, pounding rain, high winds and constant lightning flashes until nearly 4:30 a.m. I'm exhausted! I hate lightning, and now with every storm that comes I fear the giant elm out back will come crashing down on the house. But I hate the thought of having it taken down. The noise of the storm is what woke me up from a satisfying deep sleep. At first I thought it might be hail pounding against the house so, and so I staggered out of bed to the nearest window, lifted the curtain and peered out, just as a gigantic jagged flash of booming lightning crackled across the sky and, from the trajectory, into the ground, less than a block away. But I didn't stay at the window long enough to check it out. I jumped back into bed and it was all I could do not to pull the covers over my head like a scared little kid! I WAS scared! You probably thought I was kidding last week when I mentioned the next big thing - mining poop for gold dust (due to the increase of the uber-wealthy eating food dusted with gold). Darlings, you ain't see nothing yet! Bird poop wars Stealing Used Grease On a more somber note, a former Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Geremi Gonzalez was killed last Sunday by a lightning strike in his home country. I heard about this a couple of days ago on the radio as I was getting ready for work and wasn't paying particular attention, but I thought I heard that lightning actually struck a necklace he was wearing at the time. How likely is that??? I did not find confirmation of this on the internet, but there are over 400 stories and I'm not going to look at every one. There are several news releases on the internet, all about saying the same thing, but this one does report that there are several different versions of what was actually going on at the time of Gonzalez's death. Believe me when I tell you that hearing stories like this one does not put my mind at ease about my fear of lightning! I'm outta here!