July 5, 2012

• Last Friday

  So last Thursday evening I spent a nice night with my Dad and youngest brother watching How to Train Your Dragon and, you know, it was just an all around pleasant evening. One of the things I talked to my Dad about was coming down to his place again for his next communion service. I haven’t been to a communiion service in years and I just felt it was time I went to one.

  Then Friday comes around and we have a great cookout around 1 and eat grilled chicken, corn on the cob, and macaroni and cheese. YUM! So we visit for a little bit after the food settles and eventually it is time for my brother and me to go as we had plans to visit our other brother(he’s in the middle) at his place at 5. So it’s a nice trip back for the most part when, about 4:30, my Mom gives me a call and tells me there are some major storms coming in. My brother and I look out the car windows while driving on I-71 and see nothing. So we don’t worry too much. Then a few minutes later my Mom calls and says she’s leaving work early to avoid it.

  Now we’re getting a little worried, but other than a slight tinge of grey down south, we still don’t see anything. So it’s getting to be about 10 til 5 and our Mom calls to say it is really REALLY nasty for her on her trip home and the most I can say is to stay safe but since she’s on the highway on the way home she can’t exactly pull over or who knows who might run into her stopped on the highway in pitch black darkness. Ugh. Then, then my brother and I start to see some dark clouds to the West. Great.

  But up until that point we had only had maybe four drops of rain so we’re thinking that maybe we can get to our brother’s place before this thing hits. Nope. He tries to call us a couple time and we try to call him once we see that our direction is taking us straight into the path of the storm. No connection. We try texting…nothing. So we get to broad street and BAM…wind. Wind. WIND. The car is rocking and we’re stuck in traffic maybe 5 minutes away from our brother’s house. I just tell my youngest brother that no matter what we run into, I’m right here with you. He looked at me wierd but I know he appreciated that. I don’t drive as many of you know so I have no experience driving though the hell we went through. He’s only 21 so he’s just a kid when it comes to driving experience. But boy he got some during the time we were exposed to the storm. We had to dodge orange barrels that were in the road. We watched as the lightpoles blew up and sparks flew. We watched as the streetlights went out and people treated four way stops as their own personal, “I’m going NOW!!!” zones. Oy.

  So the wind and the rain are hurricane force according to the radio. 82 and higher mile per hour winds. By the time we got to our brother’s house he had lost power and so he had manually opened the garage door and we parked inside. It was about 5:10 at this point. The storm was nasty, brutish, and short(if you get that you get a mini). So it didn’t last too much longer once we got to his place. BUT, we had nothing to do except play cards by candlelight. So we played phase 10 just the three of us. My sister in law was away for the evening. It was supposed to be a nice brother get together where we got Bob Evans take out and enjoyed a Netflix movie or something. It ended up being much more memorable.

  About halfway through Phase 10 we were all beginning to get hungry so we talked about what would be wise in light of the fact that we had no power, and likely most of the people around broad street were also without power. My middle brother and I decided to go to Wendy’s while my middle brother watched Leonard, middle brother’s dog.

  Wendy’s! Oh man. We went on broad street and EVERY food place had, like, 25-35 cars in the drive through. So I tell my middle brother to just park and we’ll go inside rather than waste gas in the drive through. Keep in mind the storm has passed. So we go in there and there we waited for at least an hour for the food. It was just so freakin busy. I paid for it since I had already told my middle brother I’d pay for the Bob Evans meal.

  So we get back, and eat, and I won at Phase 10 and then middle brother teaches youngest brother and me a game called Sevens. He won every time since he knew the strategies but we’ll play some more in the future. Eventually it started getting dark and youngest brother and I left for home.

  When we got home there was power. No internet or cable though. We got very very lucky since the line of house just across the street was without it(and was until yesterday!). My youngest brother works at a Home Depot, Lowes, Menards type store so he went to work the next day and said they were swamped with people wanting generators.

  For myself? I kept my laptop plugged in and played computer games for the most part. I have attached a picture of my new all time low score in hearts.
  

  One! Can you believe that? And note the date….6/30/12. Mwa ha ha. So other than that I just read a lot and wrote some in my personal journals. Eventually we got internet and cable back and, as of now, all but about 10,000 Franklin county customers have power.

  So that was my weekend. How was yours?

  • 8:05 pm
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