It’s been a rough month! I’m ever so thankful for everyone’s concern and support. Here’s a quick recap on the notable apocalyptic events of recent weeks.
March 24
I live in Wylie, TX. My wife Janine and I wake up around 10:30pm to hear what sounds like a freight train bearing down on us. Hail was coming down in various sizes, much of it quarter or golf-ball sized. Entire ground was white with hail. Was so loud we did not realize till after the fact that we had double-paned windows both upstairs and downstairs that were shattered as a result. Some hail bounced across the gameroom and was at our stairwell — traveling over half the width of our house inside.
The next day there were dead birds everywhere, victims of the deadly, large hail.
In the aftermath, we took stock of the damage. We’ll have to:
- Replace our roof
- Replace our gutters
- Replace several windows
- Replace most of our window screens (it looks like werewolves were clawing to get inside)
- Replace many of our blinds
- Replace our pergola (it was twisted and damaged and we had to tear it down for safety reasons)
- Sandblast and refinish our wood fences (looks like someone took a machine gun to them)
All this work is underway and our insurance is paying for almost everything, but it’s still exhausting to work with so many contractors, etc.
March 31
A head cold was making the circuit among my sons, and I eventually got it around March 31. We have plastic sheeting duct-taped around our many broken windows, but despite that the outside air flows freely in the house around the edges, which is really bad for my allergies and asthma. I think that was a contributing factor to what happened next. It couldn’t get any worse, right?
Wrong.
April 4
April 4 my cold turned into pneumonia. Spent most of the week in bed just trying to breathe.
April 11
Mostly over pneumonia at this point, not contagious but will still take a few days for my lungs to clear up. Then we had another round of hail! Our house was unscathed, but my sons got caught in it.
My oldest son Matt was driving (with my son Paul in the passenger seat) in Wylie about 5 minutes NW of his place (10 minutes SE of my house). Rain had not yet hit, but on the edge of the impending storm, BASEBALL-sized hail started raining down on them. One piece of hail hit and knocked completely off the rear-view mirror. Another few hard hits shattered the rear windshield. The front window was a spider-web of cracks at this point. It was a pretty dangerous situation.
Matt knew if the front window gave way they’d be in a world of hurt. They were in a rural area and visibility was near zero, but Matt knew there was a school nearby, so he did some crazy driving (including hopping a concrete curb and possibly damaging the car) in order to get to safety. They ended up in the lee (non-wind) side of the school and escaped further baseball sized hail. Their car looks like someone took a baseball bat to it, but aside from Matt having one cut on his arm from broken glass, our boys made it through this safely.
Boys’ Car Rear Window
Boys’ Car Front Window
Neighbor’s Picture of some of the Hail
April 12
My friend Jeff from my gaming group who also lives in Wylie found his trampoline over in his neighbor’s yard — tossed around by the wind! I believe he’s otherwise unscathed.
Jeff’s Trampoline
Wylie schools are closed due to the latest hail damage. But, everyone is safe! I hope our family is done with adventures for a while!
Now adding dealing with a totaled car to our long list of repairs. :-0
In order to carve out time for writing, sometimes you have to draw the line and cut off the email spigot. How?
The winner fo the 2008 Evangelical Book of the Year–
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