We had a little storm blow through the other day. It (to my delight) took out a tree in front of the house. Sure, It was blocking a little bit of the view. One thing. When it came crashing down, it almost killed a man that was walking up the street.If you click on the picture, it should blow up in a seperate window. If not, hold down the shift key and click on the picture.
Anyway, in this picture, you can see Richard, Maryann, and William in the middle of the tree, being impressed that it actually fell. In their eyes, trees are supposed to be these massive things that are impervious to such things.
As you can see, the tree was a little on the large size. I would have to estimate the girth to be about 60 inches or so. The strange part was that the storm literally ripped the root system out of the ground.
Maryann was the most impressed that the tree fell. Just the day before, she was sitting in the tree's shade. I was one of the trees that everyone sat underneath because it created a great amount of shade for the picnic table and the bench that was underneath it's canopy.
One of the things that this storm did, was to reorient the house. 
Yes, the wind was so strong that it moved the house a little bit south. Some of the flooring (floor boards) that are on the first floor had been moved to the point of them bouncing up as you walk on them. More on that in another post.
When all this was happening, Bridget and the kids were on the porch. All of them were yelling at Tom who was the guy walking up the street when this all was happening. Just before the tree fell, I could see his umbrella fold upwards in the wind and that is when everyone else was running into the house. Of course, I am the big dummy and passed them in the doorway as I was running out into the storm.
I had seen Tom walking up the street, then as his umbrella folded up because of the wind, he literally disappeared from view. The rain and wind were blowing so hard, I could not see more than 50 feet from the house. Just as he disappeared, I saw this massive shadow come crashing down, covering the street and what looked like, crushing Tom. So as I was running out of the house in the middle of this seriously dangerious storm, he was huddled down in back of the scoop in front of the house. He was missed being crushed by mear inches. I ran over to where the tree fell and was relieved to see he was still alive. I was damn impressed that he was unhurt. So, after a few seconds of telling him that he needed to come over to the house, he came over and stood in the front door and shook for a minute until the storm finally blew over.
So, once we saw that Tom was OK, we all went outside and admired the damage. It was not very interesting. Only the fact that this all transpired just after a concert was blown away up the street at the park and just minutes ago.
It was stimulating when we went out and saw that everyone was out looking at the trees and seeing that everyone was unhurt.
By the way, In case you didn't know, you can use the web messenger from any browser by clicking on the link here. I am nearly always online and have the instant messenger running (another thing to read and listen to Jon) so even if I am not there, I will get what ever message sent the next time I sit down at the computer. Pretty neat if you ask me.
