well there are a few thoughts I want to post but the first thing is THANKS to everyone that gives information and ideas on this forum. I have learned a lot from these posts.

well last week we had a small thunderstorm here in my area of TN. I left work (10 mi) and hit heavy rain that lasted for about a mile then slacked off. We had heavy winds after the rain and as i was driving home i was noticing the treetops swaying about 20 - 25 ft with the wind. As I was driving a telephone pole snap and fell towards the road. I hit the brakes and luckily the wires held it up and kept it from landing on a compact car. Fortunately i knew of an alternate route home (thanks to all here). I had my girlfriend call the police and tell them were the pole was, they already knew about it but at least I tried. (need to put local non emergency police number in my cell)

After I got home we had power for about 5 minutes then lost power. there was some rice already cooked for supper but as we have an electric range there was no power to cook the stir fry beef. The gas grill worked well for this with a cast iron griddle like thing that I had. BUT a gas grill takes forever to heat up a pot of frozen corn. (should have used the camp stove but was talked out of it by my GF).

I was kind of hoping the power would stay off as the kids were playing outside but it came back on around 9:00. The power being out was more of an inconvenience for the kids. I kind of enjoyed it actually.