And then ... the lights went out!

We had a little excitement at our house on Friday morning! Around 7:15 a.m., I was eating my breakfast and watching the morning news as usual. All of a sudden, the lights flickered -- there was a loud 'pop!' and the lights went out. In fact, everything shut off! The little bit of ice that we had on Thursday night was too much for the leaning tree in our backyard. It tipped over just enough to take down the power lines on our house and one of our neighbors to the west on Mulberry Street.



So there we were ... in the dark.



We lit a few candles, got ready for the day as much as we could, and prepared to head out to Mark's studio so that I could finish getting ready for work. We could see two power lines dangling in the wind from the pole. They weren't touching the ground but it sure didn't look safe! And Duke Energy couldn't give us any kind of estimate on how long it would take them to come out and fix it.



As we were backing out of the driveway, we discovered that someone had smashed into our mailbox, took out part of our bush, drove through our front yard -- and didn't stop to tell us! We found the actual mailbox in our front yard and the post and random pieces of it scattered across the driveway. I was more upset than Mark but glad that it wasn't worse.



We made it through the icy slush to Main Street. I finished getting ready and Mark started his day early. Mark kept on tope of Duke Energy throughout the day and by 5 p.m. we had power again -- yay! But here's what the Duke tree trimmers left behind:

We are thankful that the power was out for just one day! We know that there are many people in Indiana and across the midwest and northeast that have been without power for days. You never realize all of the things you can't do without electricity until something like this happens. We're also grateful that the tree didn't damage the shed or the house or anyone else's house.

Anyone need some firewood? : )