God must have bowled a 300 last night

When I was younger, I always thought that thunder was God bowling in heaven. But then again, I always had weird ideas concerning a lot of things religous based. Like when I went to church, I used to think the candles were actually glasses of milk (because they were white), and that the confessionals were bathrooms. I always thought it cool---and a bit weird---that the priests all had bathrooms with their names on the door, while the bathrooms on either side offered privacy only in the form of a curtain however, with the only sign of it being occupado was a red light over the doorway.

Anyway, last night there was a fierce thunderstorm in the area. The biggest in quite a long while. It probably started up somewhere between 11:30 and midnight. Right about the time I was getting ready for bed with a little reading, which is ahrd to do when French Kiss---one of the cats---is insistently pushing her head into my hand for a little love.

See, she's strange like that. Most of the day she's hidden away---under the bed, the couch, or somewhere else I've yet to find. You hardly ever see her. And when you do, she skittishly runs off, like I'm Godzilla stomping on her little Tokyo. But the night time is apparently the right time, because once it gets dark, she comes out for some loving in full force, viking hat on and everything.

So we're lying there, and the storm starts. Now I love a good thunderstorm at night. It's great to go to sleep to. Or to wake up to in the middle of the night. The flashes, the distant rumble, the sound of rain on the window, knowing you're safetly protected behind wood and glass, comfortable under blankets. It's easy to sleepily appreciate this, at least for me.

Last night, however, was different. Those flashes of lightning were more like a pyrotechnics show that would put a Kiss concert to shame. And the thunder? Let's just say God was bowling a 300 last night. I can't remember the last time thunder actually made my bed shake. (And yes, you can take that any way you want.) Car alarms were going off at the rate of at least one per minute at the height of the storm. And when they weren't, distant sirens took up the call.

It very much sounded like the end of the world out there, in a very War of the Worlds sort of way. I figured if I looked out the window I might see some of those menacing tripods busily turning my neighbors into cremains. Not that I would have minded for a few of them. (You people that roar up the street in the middle of the night with your mufferless hot rods....I'm looking at you, dust bunnies!)

But it ended after a while, that spectacular light and sound show, and I managed to get off to sleep, only to face the real end of the world this morning, when the alarm went off. Truly there has been no more sadistic invention.