“Don’t touch *anything*!” said the nice, friendly fireman. And here I’d been thinking I had nothing to blahg about today.

I kind of wanted to go kayaking this morning but when I got up it was raining cats and dogs and the GG was feeling a little “slow.” I thought, “okay, this is probably the last day I’ll get to slug around for quite some time because school starts tomorrow morning, bright and early.” So I parked myself in front of my powerbook and worked on Sockzilla while studying the WordPress codex. I may not be able to knit and play the flute simultaneously but I *can* knit (or play the flute) and read more or less simultaneously.

It has rained on and off all day but it’s been a quiet, warm sort of rain without any wind or lightning. Actually, a perfect day for slugging around not being terribly ambitious. And then. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzt. All the lights dimmed and flickered and the microwave started blinking. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

What was *that*? I unplugged my powerbook. It sounded like it was coming from the schoolyard. Could the construction workers over there have hit a power line? I was a little leery about going outside but finally we did. A fire truck was just pulling into the neighborhood and it parked in front of Madison’s house. The buzzing started up again, along with a spectacular mass of multi-colored sparks and flames behind Madison’s house. (Madison was safe and her house was narrowly missed.) The flames and buzzing continued intermittently as neighbors gathered and the firemen put yellow tape up everywhere.

There is some dispute about whether lightning struck or a dying tree got weighted down by water and simply fell over. I certainly didn’t hear any thunder. Whatever the cause, the tree fell onto some high-voltage power lines and the whole mess landed in Madison’s backyard. To quote the fireman, “it’s arcing all over.” A telephone pole a block away was broken and a garage over on Duncan, a couple blocks in the *other* direction, was on fire. Our friend the fireman said that he didn’t even want to think about how much voltage was going into the ground back there and that anything in the area could be electrified. At that, I turned around and walked back to my house, which was not electrified. At least it hadn’t been when I left it.

UPDATE: It was Alice’s garage and it didn’t catch fire but a live wire came down in her back yard and burned a big trench in the lawn and the fire was headed toward the garage.

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