A bolt of lightening struck our house last night. Was that ever a creep-fest! The whole place smelled of ozone and Tarka was literally scared sh!tless and we had to clean the carpet. The lights went off, the server re-booted (and it runs Linux, so you know it took a powerful hit) and all the uninterruptable power supplies in the house beeped at once.

I hope that we get enough rain out of the front moving through that it takes us out of the Palmer Drought Survey. Even a designation of D0 is no fun when it comes to gardening and water use. The one thing I don't understand is how a 75 year graph works (well, yes, I do, but read on.) If NE 6 (us) is only normal 30% of the time, how does that remain "normal?" Doesn't that mean a new normal baseline should be in effect?

And yes, I am not only a computer geek, but also a weather geek and the weather channel is the one watched most often on the TV here. I can't watch TV for any length of time because of the head/neck injury but I do watch it for the weather.

I used to leave the TV on the Animal Planet thinking that it would be good company for Tarka when I was leaving the house. The plan back-fired on me when it became a discriminative cue. Now when I turn on the Animal planet she blocks the door so I can't leave without taking her or making a fast turn around and running for the front door that we seldom use because the porch is unstable and in need of repair.

Now I just leave the stereo on classical music when I leave the house. Dogs are more relaxed and well-behaved when listening to classical music. I listen to pretty much all types of music, but apparently Tarka, if she is like the test group, would prefer I listen to Bach.