Coming back from the dark ages

We had a tornado warning Monday evening. Don't know that one touched down, but we had a lot of swirling winds, lightening and thunder and rain. From the walkout basement window I could see the tops of 70 ft oak trees swaying and twisting just north of the house, but none of them fell. We lost power about 7 pm and it was just restored yesterday (Thursday) at noon. I took a few pictures right after it blew through and the next morning. We lost a couple of trees - one dead one and a large limb fell across the lane to the back cornfield: (JR had to go along to investigate of course!)
The cornfields all around us have been hit hard -- from the top of a hill looking down you can see what look like crop circles in the center parts of the fields -- corn flattened in a swirling pattern. The next two pictures are of our field north of the house -- both knocked over from the force of the wind and the swirled pattern:

This shot is looking from the cornfield back towards the house -- not a big distance!





This is our neighbor and friend's house -- about 2 miles down the road. This tree miraculously missed the house and fell on another tree. It did pull their electric connection to the road away from the house, but did not sever the lines. (This was not the cause of our disruption in service -- that was a simple fuse that was broken on a pole south of our neighbor to the south -- which we informed ComEd about on Tuesday after they had restored power to everyone around us -- but that's a rant better left alone!)

Needless to say, this has not been a real fun or productive week! Yesterday Bill had an angiogram -- results were excellent. He has no new blockages and his 3 grafts from his bypass surgery 10 years ago look great. Stress test results were in that 20% of results that are a false positive. So, he's doing fine, resting until he can get back to normal on Sunday. His sister, Anne's angiogram on Tuesday did not go as well. She will be having surgery Monday to replace her aortic valve, and a double bypass and they will be cauterizing whatever nerve or whatever it is that causes her arrythmia -- all at the same time. She is 84 and is not in great health to begin with, so we'd appreciate any prayers for her. She sounded good on the phone when I talked to her last night (she's about an hour away from us). All of her kids (4) will be with her by Sunday -- so that's a good thing!
AJ had another migraine this week and will be seeing his pediatrician this afternoon. When they came down for Bill's surgery yesterday, he crawled into my lap and said, "Grandma, I don't have a headache today!" And Will was his usual charming self -- delighting all the other people in the cardiac/surgery waiting room with his antics and smile.

Gratitudes:
We did not have any trees fall on the house!
We managed to get one of the last generators available at Farm & Fleet, so we at least could power up the refrigerators.
Anne's kids will all be with her on Monday - one or two have been with her all week.
Electricity.