Nature provided a busy weekend

I continue to be awed at the combination of beauty and destruction that Nature provides. The ice came in last Friday and its weight bent trees over, felled trees, brought down branches and wires and raised havoc throughout the state, especially Southern Maine.

Power outages caused considerable discomfort to thousands of Mainers, not to mention the thousands of dollars in damage by falling trees into cars, houses, and businesses. Let’s not forget the thousands of dollars in lost business, too, by businesses unable to open due to power failure.

Gator Wife and I were rather lucky on our little homestead. We did lose a few small branches but we never lost our power. I think we were among the blessed few in our town that didn’t lose power. My Fearless Friend and Mrs. FF were without power for several hours. They have a generator so they did have enough power to maintain essential services.

Two (a married couple) of my Senior Fitness Group members were without power for more than 28 hours. When they finally got back on line yesterday, they sent me some spectacular pictures of their area in an adjacent town. I have not heard from other members of the group to learn how they made out. I’ll probably be caught up on them tomorrow.

Saturday and much of Sunday brought bright sunshine to the area. That sunshine showed the beauty of Nature’s storm. With so much ice on the trees and bushes, the sunlight turned them into colorful prisms. All around the East side of my house the dazzling colors turned our yard into a Christmas Wonderland.

The pictures you see scattered throughout here today were taken Saturday off my front steps. My new little camera really doesn’t do justice to the beauty we had; but they will give you an idea of the view from our little corner of the state.

Clouds rolled in yesterday afternoon signaling a change in the weather. The temperatures rose through the night into the 30s and we told they could be in the low 50s today. Along with that comes some more wet weather. It’ll be showers later today, though, with just a weak "perhaps some light snow."

This will be one of those “worrisome” weeks for me. The next event in the series that will determine if I get an Implanted Cardiac Defibrillator or not is scheduled. I’ll be having a cardiac catherization Thursday. That probably will go a long way toward a decision. I think it would be safe to say I’m not exactly looking forward to this venture.

I like what I consider to be clever commercials. A good one is the AT&T cell phone commercial using a track runner to illustrate the speed of the company’s 3G network. The top half of the track man looks like he’s virtually standing still as he thumbs a text message and his legs are going a mile a minute. “Really fast,” he says of the new cell phone network.

Those are my thoughts early this morning. We’ll try again tomorrow.

GiM