Where Did The Time Go?

Up in a bolt of electricity.

Saturday late afternoon a thunderstorm rolled through town. It rained hard for almost an hour before we heard one clap of thunder off in the distance. A minute later while we were in the middle of watching Disc 2 of Season 6 of West Wing the flash and the clap happened nearly instantaneously. The power to the house blinked off quickly, but came back on before any of the digital clocks lost what time it was (except for one which jumped ahead 1 hour exactly.)

The surround receiver was making a steady loud popping sound and the TV would not come back on. Both items were plugged into a surge protector that is for the whole entertainment system. So, one gargantuan tube TV gone and one surround sound receiver toast. Neither of the DVD players were hurt.

Inventoried the rest of the electrical stuff through out the house and came up with a few more items that were wiped out by the EMP. Phone/answering machine was gone, but the plain old still worked. The sprinkler control box, which was wounded in a similar incident in 2002 was now flashing No Power. I checked the transformer and it was putting out the proper voltage, so I figured crispy chip or something.

The severest blow was to the cable modem, horrors, no internet. It was no big deal while the cable was delivering noting but snow to the 13″ TV in the back room. By the time the cable came back and it was confirmed that the modem really was dead, it was too late to buy a replacement. Then the South Carolina blue laws prevented us from buying a replacement until after 1:30 PM. By the time we were back up and running it was almost 22 hours without. How did we live BI (before internet.)