we'll never know for sure

what happened, but we came home to a broken hot water heater leaking through the house, and our phone line, and the box where it goes into the house (seen here), burned out across the yard and up the utility pole, taking out our phone and internet. One possible explanation seems to be a lightning strike. It took most of the week to get things back to normal (luckily, we could take hot showers in our camper in the yard). But one thing that got wet was a box of old photos and slides that for some reason wasn't where all the other photos are kept. Most were salvaged, after being spread out everywhere, and now plan to have the slides all put on discs or sticks- something I should have done long ago. (take heed!) We're just lucky a fire didn't start (the dogs were here) and that D arrived before the water spread to the whole house.