Things that go boom in the night

Last night it rained and thundered and rained and lightning'd (is that even a word?) and rained some more.

I had just left SkiGuy a message to see if he was available to do dinner this weekend and put down my cell phone when there was this massive boom that shook the entire building and I clearly heard the sound of crashing glass. Now, first and foremost, it was such a loud explosion it really did sound like a bomb had gone off. I personally just thought it was a really loud clap of thunder that would have made me crap my pants if I hadn't already taken care of that issue earlier in the evening.

I went out into the hall as Female Roommate came running out to check on the people in the apartment upstairs. I had thought the crashing glass was the breaking of the framed lithograph in the hall but it was still on the wall and not on the floor as I had expected. That's when I heard Female Roommate tell me that the window in the living room was broken. Male Roommate called out to her to check and make sure she was okay and there were a few small scratches on her shoulder and Male Roommate thought she had been singed by lightning. Apparently, he saw a huge flash of light come through the living room right as the explosion happened.

At this time, the upstairs apartment dwellers came down and we went back into our apartment where we saw chunks of brick scattered throughout the apartment. We thought at first that lightning had struck our building but then we realized that the steeple of the church behind us had been struck and subsequently exploded leaving a huge crater where the brick steeple had once been. A nice chunk of brick was sitting on the fire escape from where it had struck the window, the window screen had busted open, and we found four or five small piece of brick as far back as the roomies bedroom area (about 20 feet). Had Female Roommate been about four feet over on the couch, she would have been beaned in the back of the head with pieces of brick and glass.

The downstairs garden apartment people were outside and they had chunks of brick everywhere including one piece that was about eight or nine bricks still in one huge clump. I volunteered to venture onto the roof to make sure there was no damage and when I got up there (my first trip up to the roof) there were chunks and chunks of bricks all over our roof and the one next door. Thankfully our skylight was spared but the one next door had some serious cracks in it with piece of brick embedded in it. The garden next door had tables overturned and there was a huge slice taken out of a tree where chunks had obviously flown through.

When we got back downstairs, we got on the phone with the police to alert them to the situation at the church. We didn't know what other damage had occured there and we were all pretty much thankful that the huge (and I do mean HUGE) stained glass window didn't shatter during the explosion.

This all took about forty minutes from beginning to end and when I got back to my bedroom after we had all calmed down a bit I saw that SkiGuy had called back. We have a date for next Wednesday (he's out of town this weekend) for drinks and potentially dinner afterwards.

We shall see....lots of excitement for one night.