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Chris Knight's avatar

This is why I still cherish my Game Boy Advance.

I found this story at Not The Bee: the “real life news” daughter site of The Babylon Bee, one of my favorite places on the whole heapin’ World Wide Web.  Seems that 13-year old Vlad Skuridin of Cypress, Texas was playing a game on his computer.  Suddenly a bolt of lightning struck his house and blew him out of his chair.  For good measure the lightning strike also set a small fire in the attic and knocked a hole in the wall.

Here is young Vlad describing the incident to KPRC reporter Corley Peel:

Okay, let’s be clear: playing the video game itself did not cause lightning to strike Vlad.  It doesn’t sound like the bolt was channeled through his computer and from there jumped to Vlad.  He just happened to be touching a metallic surface when the ...

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I feel kind of foolish now.  In preparation for what was being declared a disaster of massive proportions, I stocked up on a dozen cans of deviled ham and jugs of water and got ready for the worst.  The storm was supposed to hit mid-day on Saturday (two days ago) with snow and sleet, then become freezing rain with 1-3 inches of ice on all the exposed surfaces.  We were told to get ready to be trapped inside for the next three or four days.

Instead, there was a nice bit of snowfall yesterday morning about 1 a.m.  With below freezing temperatures it did make travel a bit hazardous.  But the much-ballyhooed thick sheets of ice never came about.  There was some rain yesterday evening but the system moved out of the area sooner than expected.   It also began warming a bit.  About 2 this morning the temperature was
...
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Major winter storm event forecast to hit the eastern seaboard on Saturday and Sunday, four days from now.

I’m hearing all kinds of wild prognoses for the Spartanburg area.  Anywhere from 6 inches of snow to 3 inches of solid ice!

And the predicted accumulation for snow is far more intense the further north one goes.  My family and friends in Reidsville, North Carolina are looking at a monster.

This has the potential to eclipse the 1993 Storm of the Century.  I honestly never thought there wouldn’t be anything like that again in my lifetime.  But this could be it.

If I disappear for a few days, as happened a little over a year ago during Hurricane Helene, assume that Tammy the Pup and I are doing okay, just without power and/or Internet.

In the meantime, this could be historic.  I’ll be keeping an eye on this with great interest....

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 …and Tammy is staying warm with three blankets.

She is as snug as a bug in a rug 🙂

We had a dusting of snow in the past two days but nothing significant.  My friends and family in North Carolina got enough to cover the ground and cancel school.  I doubt those of us in the Upstate are going to get any more at this point in the season.  But I’ve been wrong before....

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Got lots of friends in the path of this monster.  On either side of the Florida peninsula.

I’m praying that this might yet sputter out before it makes landfall.  Hurricanes have been known to be crazy like that.  Not often, but it does happen.
Please y’all, be safe.
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The past few days will go down in history.  The comparison I keep hearing is that “this is our Katrina” and that’s not inaccurate at all.

If God saw fit to humble us, He certainly did with Hurricane Helene.

As I write this it’s almost 7:30 pm EST on October 1st, 2024.  I was away from the house for much of the day so I don’t know when exactly the juice came back on but when I returned an hour ago the power was restored.  It had been out since a little before 8 on Friday morning, four and a half days ago.  So that’s about a hundred hours that we were without electricity.

I drove around the area on Friday night.   Didn’t get too far.  There were
big trees fallen all over the place, across the roadways.  I’ve never seen so many power lines down.

I had to ...

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It was this day, March the 12th, thirty years
ago.

I was eighteen, taking first year classes at the local
community college.  I worked part time at
Subway, but I didn’t have to go in that night. 
About 4 that Friday afternoon Dad asked if I wanted to ride with him to
Ridgeway, across the state line in Virginia. 
There was this little convenience store there that EVERYONE in
Rockingham County seemed to go to when they played the lottery.  I said sure, I’d come along.  It was a cold and cloudy day for mid March.

Looking back, I now recall the sound of the air around us
before we hopped into the truck.  It had
a very muffled characteristic.  I hadn’t
heard air like that in a long time.  That
should have been the first clue, about what had ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Disclaimer: I have yet to see Disney’s Frozen, so I have no idea about how extensive Elsa’s criminal activities go.  I’m assuming they are pretty pervasive, given how much I’ve heard it talked about by numerous children I’ve found myself around.

Just days after police in Harlan, Kentucky issued a warrant for her arrest, Queen Elsa was located this morning all the way in Hanahan: a small town near Charleston, South Carolina.  Hanahan police spotted Elsa freezing a fountain in broad daylight.  Police swooped in and arrested the Snow Queen before she could bring down the fury of a cold front threatening the area.

ABC News 4 is reporting that…

With more bitter cold heading to the Lowcountry this week, Hanahan
police officers tried to do their part to stop the encroaching weather
by arresting the Snow Queen.

Police Chief Mike Cochran and Officer Flor Reyes made

...
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Chris Knight's avatar

Actually, scratch that… because winter is here, bay-bee!!!!

Freezing records getting shattered all over the country today.  Here in North Carolina we’re set to have a morning temperature of 4 Fahrenheit two days from now.  Even so, we’re much warmer than our friends in the north.

Let’s hope the Wall hasn’t been breached.

‘Cuz if you thought illegals coming in from the South has been bad, it’s nothing compared to the White Walkers!

Speaking of Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire, I’ve developed a theory. Despite everything George R. R. Martin insists, I think the world of Westeros may be our own Earth, thousands of years from now.  There have been what could be deemed a few hints that such is the case (in the books, not so much the HBO television series).  Whatever it was that threw the seasons so wildly out of whack is ...

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