Was supposed to be a cold front, but turned out to be a wind and rain front. Did a lot of damage. Caved in a neighbor's garage roof and damaged two of his vehicles. Lots of signs and tree limbs down around town. I was concerned, because my office had leaked last Monday night. But there was slight leakage around some of the windows, and no damage.

I had also left the computers plugged in, but there was no lightning damage. When the first wave of two hit about 1:30 a.m., it was a continuous roll of thunder mixed with spetacular flashes of lightning.

When the second wave hit (after a complete calm, reminding me of what I'd read about hurricanes), I unplugged what little had been left, among the appliances was the refrigerator. This morning it wouldn't run, so we figured we'd lost this 18-year-old antique. As it turned out, the 110 volts wasn't working in the neighborhood, but the 220 was. (Our city is 220, but we have some 110 plugs to service appliances brought from Belo Horizonte.)

Final result: we came out of this smelling like a (wet) rose. Not everyone was so fortunate.

I was getting ready to leave today to give a course in a city about three hours away. I telephoned to get a few more details, only to learn that they cancelled the event and forgot to tell me.

Now I have all this uncommitted time on my hands. Reckon I'll find something to do with it?

So I'm padding the blog with some comments to show up tomorrow and Sunday. Just so you won't miss me.

Since you weren't here to help me eat them, I finished them off myself.

What will I buy next to put in the jar?

Last Saturday (Aug 3) was our 23rd wedding anniversary, so I took Vicki up the mountains to speak a night in a chalé next to a gurgling brook. (We stayed in the middle chalé.) The rain kept us from hiking up to a waterfall, but we did do a 30-min. tour of the whole vila. It was a short trip, from Friday afternoon to Saturday, but it only took an hour and 20 min. to travel, so maybe we'll climb the Serra da Mantiqueira again sometime.

Here's a panoramic shot of the area. And this page is in Portuguese, but click on the cameras for shots of the mountains and waterfalls around the town.