About an hour and a half ago, lightning struck a transformer down the street. I knew that at the time because the neighboring streets and the lower half of Dominguez Street (my street) were lit up still.

While all of my neighbors and in-laws walked around with their thumbs up their rears, I called the Philippine Utility Department (PUD) to make the report. It's a good thing I still use a phone that draws power from the phone line. Had I not made the call, we would still be without power, of that I'm certain.

Considering I live on the bundok (boondocks for all you Americans), an hour and a half is extremely fast when making repairs during a storm. This is one time that PUD did what it was paid to do.

Shortly after my previous post, we started to have power outages again. First it was for only 15 minutes. The power was back on for an hour and then off again for three and a half hours. All of this was at night, except for the tail end of the last one that ended about a half hour after daybreak.

I don't remember which day it was, but Gerry (a relative) came over and jump started my car again. After the outage, I and my son Jon went o the Freeport zone to pick up some stuff we needed, driving through the rain the entire time. Other than cooking and watching a couple of old movies, I don't remember the rest of Saturday. There were more brownouts involved, so one movie took more than eight hours to finish.

Yesterday, my wife called via the IM and wanted to see her relatives as part of the call. So there was like a ton of people crowded around my laptop for a couple of hours. Most were uninvited and tagged along with the invited anyway. Again, watching movies and cooking are about all else I remember along with more brownouts.

I did manage to answer a couple of comments and email messages along the way. I didn't bother to try to write anything for the blog because of all the interruptions and I didn't even mention all of them — I don't even remember all of them.

Except for the ants! The rain of the past few days has been driving the ants indoors and away from the flooding. Well, I remember getting out a can of a local bug spray and spraying all the areas where the ants could come in and especially the baseboard areas in the kitchen. This technique works quite well for awhile. The lemon whatever ingredient repels the ants, so the downstairs part of my house is free of ants right now. I don't like using pesticides and only use them as a last resort, like getting overrun by ants, which is exactly what happened.

Of course, my son is off to school this morning and I'm all alone in the house again. The next 12 hours should provide me with the time to do the things I used to do on a regular basis. I don't think I have completely recovered, mentally, from the things that occurred starting in June. I still suffer from a lower left leg that swells up, goes back down, swells up again, etc. I have no idea what's going on with that, but the injuries are healed (a lot of dead skin is flaking off, so I have to wash the leg frequently).

There are no apologies here. Everyone has off-days, off-weeks, and even off-months. Hopefully, my off-days are either over or will soon be over.

My short, previous post, I Have To Stop Blogging…, was my attempt at subtle humor. I'm not that easily offended by anyone, especially faceless people thousands of miles away from me.

Little did I know when I went to sleep, that PUD (Philippine Utility Department) would cut power for the entire day. The first notification was this morning, after power had been cut — a neighbor heard it on the radio. They said they would be doing it for three days the same way, restoring power only at night. My mother-in-law returned from downtown this afternoon and said there were rumors they would be doing it for five days total. Perhaps they won't do it on Saturday and Sunday where days two and three would be Monday and Tuesday. I don't know how these government workers think, so I have no idea what the heck is going on.

Had I known I would be without power all day, I would have finished up everything I could before the power got cut and then went to sleep. As always, PUD never tells us about it until after the fact. What's really annoying about it all is they have no secondary power supply. It looks like I need to save up to buy a backup generator. I don't think it will help with the water (which also runs off the same power) so I'll probably have to save up for a gravity tank (similar to a bladder).

It's just another day in the life and times of RT Cunningham. I have so much catching up to do now, it's ridiculous. Forget about anything new unless I can manage to squeeze it in somehow.