It's been a strange night. How strange? Dharma and Greg strange.

Coming home tonight, I once again saw an owl, white and tall with black eyes that stare back. I saw him on the side of the road. He turned to look at me. As I passed him, I could see him in the rear view mirror still staring.

About a week ago, something walked in front of my car. I thought it was a huge cat. I stopped, and it's head turned all the way around so the owl could stare at me. I waited and eventually drove around the bird.

I don't remember ever seeing an owl around here. Sure, I believe I've heard them but never really saw one. That doesn't mean I know they're not around. I've never seen a rattlesnake in my backyard, but I know they live here too.

So where does Dharma and Greg come in? I'm getting to that. Around two, the power went out in a bad way. You know, sucking and surging, humming and sizzling. I unplugged my amp and computer and grabbed a flashlight. Outside, I could see a tree with dancing orange light. The neighbors basically ran from their house.

The orange died down. At the time when the lights went out, I had some headphones on and didn't hear a transformer blow. The plextron went off. The plextron goes off when the fire/medical department gets a call. Something was on fire on the street above my place. That would be the transformer and the orange light. Not two minutes later, the plextron goes off again. There's brush fire in the cemetery at the end of the street, the one right above my house. Well, I'm basically between the orange light and the cementer. When the transformer blew, electricity danced between it and the cemetery, setting both places on fire.

Dharma and Greg? Okay, so last year was the tornado. There was no power for almost a week. A power crew from Florida drove up to help Alabama Power out. They're the ones who wired us back up and surounding folks. It's about a year to the day that they wired up the transformer and lines that tonight danced with electric fire, a landlocked St. Elmo's just above my sleepy little head.

During those dark days of last year, I listened to Dharma and Greg on a little, portable radio. The yellow TV remote sized radio has been a wonderful sleep aid for many a disaster. And when the power came back on here around 2:30, oddly enough, I turned on the TV to find Dharma and Greg on.

  ¶ 3:46 AM