I'll take these one at a time...

Outages: Typhoon has been up and down, mostly down, since Friday. I'm not certain the causes of this, but being as how I was in Kansas and all, I wasn't able to tend to it quickly and it was being stuborn for Al. I think it was the Typhoon Cam that was causing problems, so I shut it down until I return to the desert.

Surprises / Birthdays As I didn't mention in the last post, my Grandpa's birthday is today. His 75th trip around the sun. My Grandma was going to all sorts of trouble to put together a surprise birthday party for him, at their house on the farm. In the event that he stumbled onto my webpage, I didn't want to mention anything about it. So, Grandma had him mowing and cleaning and he couldn't figure out exactly why, but was suspicious that something was going to happen, she said that some of my relatives were coming up for his birthday... ones that are probably as particular about things being tidy as I am, if not more. So, anyway on Saturday he was going to Topeka for dinner with some family there. Only, a whole bunch of other people happened to already be at the restauarant. Not even Grandma knew that I was going to be there, so I got to surprise both of 'em. Dinner was really good. Today we went to church, and my Aunt & Uncle who go to the Catholic Church (which starts 1.5 hours earlier) set up tables and such while we were gone. Grandpa knew something more was going on then, and when we had more food than we could possibly eat for lunch. Well, he was on to us then, but he was still surprised with how many folks showed up! They all waited at the top of the drive (out of sight of the house) and drove in all at once honking their hornes. It was quite a sight. We had all sorts of good food, and lots of good family and folks to talk with, it was grand times. Look for some pictures in the photos section soon.

Lightning So last night was an awesome thunderstorm. We were out at the farm, and that just makes them all the better. I do miss the thunderstorms when I'm in Arizona, and I guess they've been getting quite a bit of good stuff here - makes me envious. Anywho, we had the kind of lightning such that there's no need for any lights because it's flashing so often that it lights up the room, or outside. Thunder to accompany it of course. I had woken up once and watched it for a bit before falling back to sleep. So here I am sleeping, soundly, dreaming about how I have this project for school we're we have to predict how often the lightning is striking (yes, that is really what I was dreaming about), when --- Flash BOOM ---. Everyone in the house was awake. The bolt was so bright you were awake to see it before you heard the thunder, which was immediate. We all swore that it hit right outside the window nearest us, however as it turns out I was right. It hit down the side of the tree right next to the house. Mostly it tore off bark, but it did get into the wood a tad bit. Its pretty amazing to look at. I'll post a picture of the tree too, probably tomorrow. I was glad it didn't hit the tree on the other side of the house, that my car was parked under! Anyway, it was a good storm, the kind I like... although probably better if it didn't hit quite so close to home next time.