Well last night sucked. Storms galore smashed their way into St. Louis last night, and for once at my house we took the brunt of it. In fact the news reports were continuously mentioning the intersection near my house as a point of some of the severest weather. Massive hail, flooding rains, 70 mph winds, and some of the worst lighting I've seen coupled with our loss of power at about 8:30 pm made for an interesting evening. I know for a fact there's about 5 large branches down in my back yard right now. I'm sure the gutters are a mess too. At least I made it to Karyn's during a break in the action so I could at least take a shower and get some relatively peaceful sleep. Of course on the way there I had my closest encounter with lighting ever driving past "Tower Tee" golf course which is named for the three massive radio towers that surround the course. I had a feeling that driving anywhere near them in a lighting storm was gonna be a bad idea, and I was right. A massive bolt hit the tower second farthest from me, jolting my car, temporarily blinding me, and causing an air disturbance so loud, it sounded like someone just shot my head out of a cannon. My vision was still blurry for several minutes after the initial strike and I had a nice ringing in my ears for a little while, but now all is well. There's still around 200,000 people in the metro area without power which doesn't surprise me after seeing how many homes and businesses were dark last night. Almost every stoplight I hit was dead. What a fun night.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 9:49 AM