A week ago we celebrated my brother in law's birthday. This was the same weekend that we had temps over 100. That Sunday was expected to be super hot too, and we were going to have his party at the park. Thankfully the extreme heat did not materialize, although it was hot and humid. It remained overcast much of the day, and started to rain shortly before the party was scheduled, so the party was moved to the newly cleaned and painted garage of my in-laws. It turned out to be a great location because it still felt like an outdoor party. The kids could play outside between rain showers and we could all stay dry.
Eventually a lightning storm rolled in. Some of the lightning was so close that you could hear the thunder before the lightning bolt disappeared from view. It was a fantastic storm to behold! Needless to say, the kids were kept inside at this point. Last year C loved to watch lightning storms with me. She was initially scared when I brought her in during this storm, but that might have been because she'd never been aware of the potential danger to herself before. It didn't take long for C and M to be completely enthralled; they were more than a little dismayed when the storm passed.
I can't find any specific numbers, but I seem to recall the meteorologist saying on the news that night that there were over 1000 lightning strikes, although many of those were in the eastern part of the state. There was a fair amount of damage, and two men in a nearby community were struck by lightning - one of which was seriously injured.
Here's a few photos I found online, including one from another storm on July 3rd. Sadly, I slept through that one. You can go to the source and see more photos by clicking here.
I have been a huge fan of lightning storms for some time now. I actually get giddy. Not quite as giddy as when it snows, but it's up there. I've decided my love for storms can be traced back to the summer of 1986. I spent the summer living with a wonderful family in Sweden. It was probably the most fun summer of my life! My memory may not be totally accurate, but I seem to remember having lightning storms on a nightly basis that summer. I do know that there were more storms than usual, which was attributed to radiation in the atmosphere following the April 26, 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
So now my reminiscing of time spent in Sweden brings me to the title of this entry. "Blixtar och dunder" is lightning and thunder in Swedish. It is also the opening line of a song by a Swedish pop group (three LDS brothers) called Herrey's. They won the 1984 Eurovision song contest with this song, which is a huge deal over there. Since they were squeaky clean, my mom helped nurture my fascination with the band. I was particularly impressed with the two younger (and single) brothers. I thought they were both "fine" and I would have been happy to call either one mine. In 1985 my whole family was in Sweden and we planned to catch a Herrey's concert in a park. I was totally excited to be going to their concert as it was only my second concert ever (my first was the Osmonds circa 1980). Imagine my dorky glee when it turned out my mom knew the oldest Herrey brother's father-in-law, and we got to meet them after the show. I was so nervous to be meeting my potential boyfriends that I clammed up and I'm sure I failed to make a lasting impression. Nonetheless, it remains a memorable moment in my life - and I have a picture to document this glorious event. Depending on how old you are, you may or may not remember how cool these ToysRUs sweatshirts used to be. I'm pretty sure I swooned when one of the brothers sang the jingle to me that was in all the ToysRUs commercials at that time. (I think is was Richard - the blond one.)
As I pulled out the photo to scan, I surprised to see that the original photo has my brother in it too. As you can see, Louis' arm is stretched out, but when I had this photo blown up for my room, and also made a wallet size for my purse, I cut him out. I totally don't remember him being there. I guess I was just in my own little world : )
Now the purpose of posting this photo is two fold. The first is to show the object(s) of my young teenage affection (since the members of Duran Duran were totally unaccessible to me). The second is to appease my Hillbilly friend. You see, as a lark I posted a photo of myself on my Facebook page a couple of months ago - showing me in all of my permed glory back in 1990. My friend was awestruck by my timeless beauty, but said that she could do better than that - so I challenged her to out-ugly me. You can see that she rose to the challenge here. I have not responded in a timely fashion because I am secure in the fact that I will, indeed, out ugly her and because I know that it will require a considerable amount of time scanning and editing old photos. So Hillbilly, consider this my first entry and stop bugging me : )
Since this has turned into a bit of a tribute to Herrey's, I'm going to put on one of their promotional photos (which is signed for me on the back) and I'm going to see if I can link to a You Tube video of their performance that won the Eurovision contest for your viewing pleasure. Now before you go making fun of the gold boots in the video, let me just tell you that they tied in with the words of the song. Everything else is just pure 80's.
Eventually a lightning storm rolled in. Some of the lightning was so close that you could hear the thunder before the lightning bolt disappeared from view. It was a fantastic storm to behold! Needless to say, the kids were kept inside at this point. Last year C loved to watch lightning storms with me. She was initially scared when I brought her in during this storm, but that might have been because she'd never been aware of the potential danger to herself before. It didn't take long for C and M to be completely enthralled; they were more than a little dismayed when the storm passed.
I can't find any specific numbers, but I seem to recall the meteorologist saying on the news that night that there were over 1000 lightning strikes, although many of those were in the eastern part of the state. There was a fair amount of damage, and two men in a nearby community were struck by lightning - one of which was seriously injured.
Here's a few photos I found online, including one from another storm on July 3rd. Sadly, I slept through that one. You can go to the source and see more photos by clicking here.
I have been a huge fan of lightning storms for some time now. I actually get giddy. Not quite as giddy as when it snows, but it's up there. I've decided my love for storms can be traced back to the summer of 1986. I spent the summer living with a wonderful family in Sweden. It was probably the most fun summer of my life! My memory may not be totally accurate, but I seem to remember having lightning storms on a nightly basis that summer. I do know that there were more storms than usual, which was attributed to radiation in the atmosphere following the April 26, 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
So now my reminiscing of time spent in Sweden brings me to the title of this entry. "Blixtar och dunder" is lightning and thunder in Swedish. It is also the opening line of a song by a Swedish pop group (three LDS brothers) called Herrey's. They won the 1984 Eurovision song contest with this song, which is a huge deal over there. Since they were squeaky clean, my mom helped nurture my fascination with the band. I was particularly impressed with the two younger (and single) brothers. I thought they were both "fine" and I would have been happy to call either one mine. In 1985 my whole family was in Sweden and we planned to catch a Herrey's concert in a park. I was totally excited to be going to their concert as it was only my second concert ever (my first was the Osmonds circa 1980). Imagine my dorky glee when it turned out my mom knew the oldest Herrey brother's father-in-law, and we got to meet them after the show. I was so nervous to be meeting my potential boyfriends that I clammed up and I'm sure I failed to make a lasting impression. Nonetheless, it remains a memorable moment in my life - and I have a picture to document this glorious event. Depending on how old you are, you may or may not remember how cool these ToysRUs sweatshirts used to be. I'm pretty sure I swooned when one of the brothers sang the jingle to me that was in all the ToysRUs commercials at that time. (I think is was Richard - the blond one.)
As I pulled out the photo to scan, I surprised to see that the original photo has my brother in it too. As you can see, Louis' arm is stretched out, but when I had this photo blown up for my room, and also made a wallet size for my purse, I cut him out. I totally don't remember him being there. I guess I was just in my own little world : )
Now the purpose of posting this photo is two fold. The first is to show the object(s) of my young teenage affection (since the members of Duran Duran were totally unaccessible to me). The second is to appease my Hillbilly friend. You see, as a lark I posted a photo of myself on my Facebook page a couple of months ago - showing me in all of my permed glory back in 1990. My friend was awestruck by my timeless beauty, but said that she could do better than that - so I challenged her to out-ugly me. You can see that she rose to the challenge here. I have not responded in a timely fashion because I am secure in the fact that I will, indeed, out ugly her and because I know that it will require a considerable amount of time scanning and editing old photos. So Hillbilly, consider this my first entry and stop bugging me : )
Since this has turned into a bit of a tribute to Herrey's, I'm going to put on one of their promotional photos (which is signed for me on the back) and I'm going to see if I can link to a You Tube video of their performance that won the Eurovision contest for your viewing pleasure. Now before you go making fun of the gold boots in the video, let me just tell you that they tied in with the words of the song. Everything else is just pure 80's.
5 comments:
AWESOME!!!!!! I totally remember your poster and those pix w/you and the guys. I was totally jealous that you got to meet those hotties!! I also remember you looking like that- and that I had a very similar hairdo at some point in life. Ugh! Thanks for the amazing pics and a trip down memory lane too! Oh, and Michael Jackson's got nothing on them!! ;-)
Sounds like it was a good memory for you. Which brother was in the picture with you?
Those pictures of the storm and lighting was so cool!!
I remember growing up in Phoenix and there being spectacular light show there as weoo.
That is RAD! I loved the picture and I loved the video! I will try to not bug you, but now that you have started, I may bug you even more. :) I remember the Toys R Us shirts! You are totally tubular!
Check it out:
http://herrey.org/
Teen
Thanks Teen for the link!
Nikki, it was my other brother that was there. I didn't remember until I was reading mom's trip narrative (after writing the post) that dad and your husband had returned home already. I think he had to go back to school since he was still in elementary school which was on the year round system.
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