Well, Good Morning Rick!

The Texas night on Wednesday was filled with driving rain, high winds, and a power outage that left the devices in my house beeping and blinking at 2:12 am. I got up and tried to do something impossible. I actually tried to turn on a light even though it was completely evident there was no power. Why do we do that? Well, maybe YOU don't. But I did.
No lights. No air conditioning. No nothing.

I decided 'screw it' and just went back to sleep. Sometime around 5:30 am the power came back on and the normal world inside my house was revived. Cave man status had been dismissed once again by Texas Utilities.
About an hour later I got up and wandered through the house, went into the kitchen and started coffee. I looked out the front windows at the mess made by the storm. Small branches and dismembered tree bits littered the front yard.

Yet the birds were singing and the air was clean as it filtered through the windows. It felt like a peaceful fresh happy morning to me all things considered.

I got some coffee, sipped it slowly and rubbed my eyes. I decided to visit the backyard to assess if the morning was as beautiful in the back as it appeared in the front.

Understand I don't sleep in pajamas or clothes of any type. Sometimes I go without clothes in the house for a percentage of the time in the mornings. (I run my business from my home)

It's not unusual for me to go into my backyard or into the swimming pool sans clothing. Or as my London blog friend Colin might say, 'starkers'. I have an 8' privacy fence shielding me from the neighbors.

So driven by my routine and without a care in the world, my coffee and my fully exposed epidermus opened the back door and wandered out onto the back terrace.

I was greeted by our behind the fence neighbor Tina with a surprised "Well, Good Morning Rick!"

The reason I was in view of said neighbor is that half of my 8' privacy fence was lying on the ground. Tina was assessing the damage. Her husband Roy wasn't out there; and somehow I was glad for that. I excused myself with an em-bare-assed grin and went back inside.

Once inside I looked out the blinds of the Breakfast room window.

Then I hopped up and down like Yosemite Sam cursing a mean blue streak of inventive and creative expletives.
Calmed down, I went outside (dressed) and looked at the damage. Tina had split, likely in gales of internal laughter. I figured the damage would be just short of my insurance deductible. Typical.

Here is a picture.

Then I rationalized how lucky I really am; as we all do when disaster strikes. You know the gap-toothed sweating idjits they always find after a tornado. The ones with the gimmme-caps and torn t-shirts? The ones that say, "I'm just lucky to be alive 'cuz' it 'shore' was a big ol bad storm." Now I know where they find those people.

And, yes the little pool angel you see in the bottom right corner is sitting on my pool. Thanks a hell of a lot, stupid angel! Good job.






Later. Have a great weekend. I'm gone to Houston today.