Saturday Morning – around 6 a.m. – sudden rainstorm! In July! Lots of clouds and a sudden downpour for about 10 minutes.
Saturday Morning – around 6:30 a.m. – power flickers, then goes out completely.
Saturday Morning – around 7 a.m. – dream I’m following a vehicle down a two-lane highway in the countryside. I get the urge to hang back and then the vehicle driver apparently loses control and fishtails and swerves all over the place. They end up on the side of the road – two people in the car were shaken, but not really hurt.
Most of Saturday – call up automated line at power company at regular interverals. Estimate changes from 1 p.m, 3 p.m., 5 p.m., 8 p.m…. Outside smells like a relatively clean barn – dirt, wet hay, distant whiffs of cow manure.
Saturday Evening – around 6 p.m. – John and I decide to make a quick (hah) trip to town. At our front gate we meet a few rancher neighbors who seem to be busy doing something – driving around in the fields – we wave from a distance and go on. On the way back, we pass a few small fire trucks zipping out, heading into town. Then, just a few hundred feet from our gate on the main road, we see black tire marks that swerved off the road, over the embankment, a towtruck with a totaled small pickup on the back – the front end is smashed in to only a foot away from the dashboard. Looks like it swerved off the road and landed nose first down in the streambed. We ask the cop who says no one was seriously hurt – passenger had a few scratches. Because of the angle of the gate and the location of the wreck, we didn’t realize what had been going on on our way out. Hadn’t been just the neighbors there, had also been the tow truck and police car. Everything had been under control anyway, but it’s really strange that we seemed to float through all of that without really realizing the whole of what was going on. I suppose if there had been something for us to do, we’d have been drawn in a little more, but it really was all taken care of.
Saturday night – still no electricity (3 a.m…… 5 a.m…… 8 a.m……) Dog jumps up and barks ferociously at regular intervals during the night because there’s no fan noise to drown out the coyotes howling on the hills.
Sunday morning – electricity finally comes on at 10:15. Frosty fridge is almost completely defrosted. Get online finally. Download lots of email. Write weblog entry.