"LET ME TELL YOU WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH YOUR GLOBAL WARMING, AL. . ."

The past week has lent an incredibly vivid and an altogether much too realistic meaning to the phrase, "We've just been chillin' out."

I'm sure that you have heard, seen, or read about the ice storm that has gripped Kentucky and several other states in its frigid, icy grasp these past several days. This incredible storm has been amazing and paralyzing in its scope and in its tenacity, particularly in western and central Kentucky. This storm arrived just five short months after Kentucky was ravaged by the winds of Hurricane Ike.

At the height of the power outage, over 700,000 customers (primarily residential) in Kentucky were without electricity. In Metro Louisville and Jefferson County alone, there were an estimated 11,500 wire-downs reported. Utility crews from Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, West Virginia and Florida have been dispatched to the Bluegrass state in an effort to get us back up and running again. In three west-central Kentucky counties alone, 600 power poles were snapped. Tens of thousands of trees across the state were flattened or shattered from the weight of the ice. Transformers were popping around town like roman candles (oddly enough resembling a lightning storm) and the nights have been eerily uneasy as we listen to tree limbs cracking and crashing to the ground. As the larger ones fall and shed their coatings of ice, they sound disturbingly like large crystal chandeliers cascading down onto polished marble floors. How's that for some descriptive imagery?

During the first two days, while much of Hardin County (Elizabethtown) was without power, we had power but no internet or television service at our house. We invited Lynne's sister Penny, Penny's husband Fernando, their son Daniel and his girlfriend Heather (couldn't get home) as well as Lynne's brother Chris to move in with us because they had no heat or power in Glendale. It was a rather cozy arrangement, to say the least.

A day and a half later, our power went off completely. Cold showers became the norm, and no. . . not for the reasons you may suspect. These were showers for purely hygienic reasons, people. Purely hygienic. Well, mostly hygienic. As a result of losing our power, our house guests returned to their own home - after first purchasing a portable generator. After having endured five days of frigidity and bleakness, our elctricity, DSL and TV were finally restored tonight (Tuesday) at about 11:00 o'clock. The pioneers were indeed hardy stock. . .we may have pegged our wimp-meter after barely a week.

Lynne spent a couple of nights in Louisville at Mike and Amber's - no loss of power - while I stayed here at night to, 'mind the store', so to speak. . . there had been several reports of burglaries and vandalism at the height of the outage.

Times like this point up the necessity of having our food storage, water and emergency supplies at the ready - which we did. On Sunday we had a very nice combined fast and testimony meeting with the Radcliff Ward. It was interesting to listen to the experiences all of the other people shared. What a week.

You can pause the following slide show to look at the individual pictures at your leisure.