Lightening strikes!

At precisely midnight last night there was a peal of thunder that lasted for a good five seconds. It had apparently been preceded by a flash of blue lightening which I missed, since my eyes were closed and I was pretending to be asleep in the hopes that pretense would become reality. However, it was enough for me to leap out of bed, rush upstairs and unplug the computer powerbars from the wall, since our chimney has been struck in the past and everything can be replaced but the unbacked-up data on our hard disks. There were a couple more bright flashes and loud cracks, but they were moving father away and were immediately replaced by a torrent of precipitation. April showers and all that�

This, of course, brings to mind the time our chimney was struck by lightening. I was awakened very early on a summer morning by the sounds of a storm, and started running around the house unplugging things. First to the attic where I disconnected the computers, and Buddy Boy ran to the basement to unplug the television set. We met in the main hallway, and were both headed into the living room where I was about to reach behind the cabinet where the stereo system sits, when there was a huge flash of lightening accompanied by its thunder and an exploding sound, which actually deafened Buddy Boy and me (his right ear, my left) for three to four weeks afterwards.

We have installed in our fireplace an encastrated woodstove with its own fan, and our chimney is fitted with a metal liner. When it was struck by that bolt of lightening, the electricity travelled through the fan electrical cord into the wall socket where it was plugged in, flipping the breaker downstairs. Don�t you just love modern safety mechanisms? However, the fan was fused and the switch box which turned it on and regulated the speed blew up (which was the explosion we heard), sending bits of plastic everywhere. If you look closely, you can see the marks in the ceiling where they hit. I was finding small pieces of hard, black casing material for weeks afterwards.

The stereo (which thankfully I was not in the process of unplugging at the moment disaster struck) ended up having a fuse burned out, the alarm system shorted out, ditto for the control for the air exchanger, one of the baseboard heaters in the livingroom (the one closest to the affected wall socket) was on, the doorbell didn�t work and the phone was dead. It was 5:00 a.m. I waited until a decent hour and went across the street to my neighbours, whose microwave oven had suffered at the hands of the lightening bolt (where mine hadn�t) and used their telephone to call my alarm system guy and the phone company. My alarm system guy said that the lightening had probably knocked out one of my telephones and that was causing the problem, so I had to check each and every phone (we have five) to determine the problem, and discovered that one phone and the answering machine were affected. Cancel the call to Ma Bell.

The insurance company was amazing. They covered everything (after my deductible) with no questions asked. We got a new alarm system, a thorough inspection and replacement of broken items by the electrician (including a bathroom fan which hadn�t been working for years), a new fan for the woodstove, a new control box for the air exchanger and a brand-new cordless telephone/answering machine. The stereo was repaired and life was good.

The ironic part of the story is that Buddy Boy and I were home alone together because Hubby and Little Princess had gone off to a star party somewhere in Vermont. They missed all the excitement, as well as being deafened. For weeks afterwards I had a �whooshing� noise in my left ear. Buddy Boy recovered more quickly, but then he was only eight or so. Ah youth�

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