It’s been raining and thundering and lightning off and on for a couple of hours. Just now, things started to get very noisy outside – heavy rain…

WHOA! We lost power for a couple of minutes after a lightning strike very close by. Suddenly, I was completely in the dark, which is not all that uncommon for me, frankly. After a few seconds my eyes adjusted enough to find the proper keys on my laptop to hibernate, so I pulled the plug and shut down. Grabbed a flashlight, because I had heard David holler and figured he was down in the basement in the dark. Grabbed a flashlight and headed to the stairs, where the lights came on and I met David, flashlight in hand, on his way up. Well, that was fun!

All is quiet outside, but I lit a couple of candles as a precaution and took a shower, because I’ve been running a slight fever all weekend, and – yuck, there’s nothing nastier than a fever sweat. Sorry for the overshare. Also, the extra humidity is good. I’m still unplugged and on battery power for the moment, but all the lights are back on and I’m listening to something on WBEZ that sounds a lot like it could be Hilary Clinton.

You know, I don’t really know why they conservatives hate her so. She’s got sensible ideas about education, legal immigration for foreign students, our eroding techological standings in the world, and so on. I really don’t get why they hate her and Bill so much. I don’t really care about Bill’s peckerdilloes – it was embarassing when his hound-dog doings were revealed, but the Puritanical hounding by the Right and their attack dog, Ken Starr, was even more shameful and embarassing, to my mind.

Yep, it’s Hil:

8pm — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Aspen Ideas Festival
Democratic New York Senator and former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton recently spoke at The Aspen Ideas Festival—a gathering of intellectuals and policy makers in Aspen, Colorado. Sen. Clinton’s remarks at the festival take Republicans to task for not spending enough on science and technology. She charges that Republicans are threatening America’s ability to compete in the global economy and threatening to “turn Washington into an evidence-free zone.”

That last line got a big round of spontaneous applause from the Aspen Institute audience, as you might think it would.

She does go on, though. It’s a competently written, but not particularly inspiring or rousing speech, although she’s better when she makes a point from personal experience. She makes solid points and criticizes the current Administration without stooping to ad hominem attacks, aside from remarking that she feels sometimes like “Alfred E. Newman is running things in Washington – you know, ‘what, me worry?'”

Anyway, the big storm seems to have blown itself out, but in the usual pattern of Midwest weather, storms often come in waves or bands, so there could be a lot more in the middle of the night.