Thunderstruck

From the archives:

The sun heats the earth's water sources, causing water to evaporate and rise into the air. As the water vapor rises, it cools and condenses to become droplets, forming clouds. These clouds collect an electrical charge, with the upper portion positive and the lower portion negative, and travel like giant capacitors along with the prevailing winds until they find themselves over Mount Laurel, New Jersey at 5 o'clock in the morning, at which point, the strong electric field causes the surrounding air to begin to break down, forming positive ions and electrons. An electron path forms through the air, ultimately finding its way to the earth, at which point a conductive path exists between the earth and the cloud, allowing massive amounts of current to travel from the cloud to the earth, causing an amount of heat in its general vicinity greater than the surface temperature of the sun. This immense heat literally causes the air around it to explode, sending a shockwave in all directions, including the direction of my house, where it A) causes both me and my wife to jump two feet in the air from a dead sleep, B) shakes the entire house, causing the ceiling fan to actually sway from side to side, and C) awakens our deaf dog, who vividly remembers being afraid of thunder. Isn't nature beautiful?

Explanation: I was very proud of this status message back when I first ran it. It required quite a bit of research, but the effort was worthwhile. I still cannot believe how loud that thunderclap was.

More Importantly: In over a year of blogging, this is the first mention of Periwinkle, my wife's sheltie who lived with us for the last year and a half of her life before finally achieving her goal of 24 hours of sleep per day at the ripe old age of 15.


There will be much more said in this space about her, but for now it will suffice to say that the Peri my wife knew was the most wonderful, well-trained, and loving dog in the whole world.*

*The Peri I knew was an almost entirely deaf senior citizen with irrational fears of tile floors and steps, whose weak stomach waged war on our carpets. I should also mention that, because I work from home, Peri and I spent a whole lot of time together. We had many wonderful conversations that only one of us actually heard.