We got hit by a short, but intense storm today. Severe enough to warrant shutting down the computers.

I got a couple of videos, so when the storm passed, I turned on my desktop, and began uploading the videos.

Then the power went out.

It was just for a few seconds.  Then it came back on.  Then off.  Then on again.  Then flickered a bit.

So much for my uploads!

I didn’t try again until after picking up my younger daughter from work.  Thankfully, my older daughter and I had put on the new windshield wipers, first!  Turns out that we have to open the hood to be able to access the wiper arms, which meant I could barely reach, and couldn’t see.  The wipers the van came with were broken and kept together with electric tape, which had come off some time ago, so the ends on the driver’s side blade were just sort of flopping.

Changing wiper blades should be easy.  Just pop off the old ones, pop on the new ones.  But no… that would be too easy!  I got the old wiper blade off, but there was a piece attached to that arm that should have come off, too.  It wouldn’t.  After a while, I figured I’d put the old blade on and try again later.  That didn’t work; a piece broke off, instead.  So later on, I backed the van out of the garage so we could see, then popped the hood.

Of course, that’s when it started to rain.  *sigh*

After righting with it for a bit, and another piece breaking off, I drove it back into the garage while my daughter got our tool kit (with all the stuff in the garage, do you think there are any actual usable tools in there?  Nope!).  While waiting, I got the passenger side blade changed.  That one came off easily, and the new blade popped right on, the way it’s supposed to.

It took a pair of pliers and elbow grease to get the driver’s side arm bar clear of the broken bit.  Once that was done, the new blade went on quite easily.  Yay!

It made all the difference while driving in the rain!

As for the videos, I’ve had some trouble uploading them; I think the power outage happening while I was trying to upload them the first time messed things up.  As I type this, the second video is still uploading, after the file got rejected three times!  But it seems to be fine now.

After the storm, I did a walk around to see if there was any damage.  A few branches had come down, but nothing serious.  I did another walk around after picking up my daughter, and there were even more branches down.  No roof damage, though, which is the main concern. :-)

The sky is clear, now, and it’s looking lovely out there.  The rain is much appreciated!

The Re-Farmer