Okay, so I have this instinct about storms. I can usually tell when they're coming and I always know the bad ones.

I was puttering at the apartment, waiting to go pick up gaelbrady, when all of a sudden, I hear a crack of thunder. I go to our balcony door and stick my head out. One direction looks clear, then I look the other way. The sky was so black and tinged with green that I was out the door within 30 seconds, racing to the campus. Better to hang out in her office for a bit than try to drive through the Apocalypse.

Thankfully, I'm driving away from the approaching storm front, giving me a little extra time, but all of the other drivers seem to have lost their ever-loving minds and are being particularly stupid. And of course, I hit every single red light on the way. I whip into a parking spot just as the rain starts falling and I sprint for the building...ever tried running uphill into a 40mph gusting wind? NOT FUN!

I'm only half-soaked when I get upstairs and collapse on the couch in gaelbrady's office as all hell cuts loose outside. We wait until it passes over, then head home. I notice there is a lot of small tree debris on the road home...and then we pull into our complex.

Trees down everywhere. At least ten of them...including the two flanking the walkway into our building. But it wasn't the wind, folks...it was a double lightning strike ten feet away from our apartment.



This is the tree on the far side of our walkway.



This is the stump of the branch from the tree right in front of our balcony...yes, only_playing, the one we were snapping twigs from. Note the charring.



Where said branch broke from the tree...more charring.




The chunk of the second tree laying across our walkway as seen from our balcony.





So yeah, that was fun.

In other news...frustrating bass lesson tonight, being overloaded at work, and trying to cram bunches of stuff in before visitors come on Friday. Oy!

Quote of the Day -- "Bono always sounds like he's singing Mass." -- from a Yahoo!Music list of the Top Ten Best Anthem Bands...U2 was number one...but Queen was not to be found. OMGWTF?!?!?