Monday, May 26, 2014

Blowin' in the wind

It's been an 'interesting' week weather-wise and several people, including me, are wishing we could turn the clock back from 9.27am yesterday so we could unplug our computer equipment to avoid an expensive power surge. The lightning strike/s apparently blew up a transformer, took out most electronic equipment that was on at the time, even those plugged into surge-protectors. My older computer was zapped and although I have a backup from April, it will be both time-consuming and difficult if there's more damage than just a blown power supply.

Our settled run of weather ended last Tuesday with a very wet 24 hours; the rain pelted down without a let-up resulting in some spectacular sounds as small trickles became raging torrents. It's unusual to get a day of solid rain here, usually it's showers breezing over with fine periods inbetween.

The DOC Visitor Centre looked more like a castle with a moat

Above and below: this is normally a wee trickle


Black Bridge at the bottom of Back Road - normally you can see most of
the large culvert
Tuesday's rain gave way to showers and gusty winds but the real wintry blast waited for the weekend when horizontal rain, hail and snow flurries came to visit. I didn't venture far from a nice cosy house with the fire lit. I thought it was perfect weather to catch up on converting a Microsoft Works spreadsheet to Excel until the lightning strike, surge and power cut put paid to that idea.

It was a social week for me; I went to the 'Wheel of Experience' show on Tuesday night, braving the dark and roaring waters and fortunately managing to walk down to the village and back in the dry. 'Wheel of Experience' tells historical stories through song and all 3 performers were excellent musicians - some of the instruments were intriguing; my favourite sound was from a cigar box slide guitar.


The set



l-r Dave, David and Peter get ready for the second half of the show

Cigar box slide guitar - what a great sound
My other social event was to visit friends for home-made pizza and to watch 'Life of Pi' on a large-screen 3D TV. What a lovely movie and even better seeing it in 3D where I could almost catch the fish as they swam round the life raft. Maybe I could hibernate my way through Winter with a stash of
books and a pile of DVDs :).