Paradise??????

Yesterday, we had some thunder and a some rain.  When I went to bed last night it was thundering and lightning again.  I woke up around 3:00 am and it was raining.  I dozed off and fell back to sleep ~ for a short time!  By now, I was wide awake!!  The thunder started rumbling again early this morning.  It grew louder and louder while the lightning was flashing.  That too seemed to get worse.  The heavens opened and it poured, yes, I mean poured the rain down.  All of a sudden the lightning lightened up the darkened skies and did it ever crack!!!  I ran back to our bedroom and jumped in bed beside Dennis.  My heart was pounding so hard and fast.  I think my body was trembling, too!  I said that I thought lightning had struck somewhere close.

As I laid there for a while lightning apparently hit something again as there was another loud crack/boom!!  I hate thunder storms!!!!!  It was about 10 or 15 minutes later that the brand new fire alarm system that we just recently had installed began going off and the lights were flashing on the side of the school building.  It was probably only a minute or two and one of our teachers was out to go to the panel box for the alarm.  Another few short minutes and another of the teachers was headed in the same direction!  Then Dennis was on his way. 

The alarm would go off and then come back on for a short period of time.  Finally, Dennis came back home and said they think that lightning struck the fire alarm system.  Not good!  It was over $17,000 and he's afraid the guy who installed it won't stand by it.  Hopefully if it was destroyed the insurance company will cover it!

There's so much water laying around from all the rain and the roads are flooded that school has been cancelled again.  No snow days here, but rain days!!  The old saying is "When it rains it pours!"  Well, that seems to be the case again today.  I've got plenty to do here at home to get caught up on that I won't be sitting around twiddling my thumbs :o)  So, Paradise is rained out today!!  I feel sorry for any tourists that may be here.  Not good for them!!

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UPDATE

Well, as the day goes on it seems to get worse and worse!  The storm really did wreak havoc on our compound here.  Several of the lights in our Sanctuary are not working, computers appear to have been fried and our Vonage phone system to call the States in the school has been fried.  It appears as time moves on today more and more things are coming up damaged!  I'm assuming the two major strikes that we heard really close was what did all the damage.  We're hoping our I.T. guy will find it's not as bad as it appears, but we won't know that for a little while yet.  On top of that we're keeping the A/C people in business.  When your units run constantly there's always something breaking down or a unit needing replaced.  I'm not sure how many have been replaced just since we moved here, but just this week they've worked on two units in the Church and now another one is being checked and may need to be replaced!  Did I say in the above paragraph something about when it rains it pours???  But we will make it and come out on top of all of this!!  What a day!!