What did we ever do to offend independence?

So, everybody knows we had a fire last year on July 4th.  What you may not know:  Yesterday, the start of the long July 4th weekend, we were hit by lightning.  Hail the size of golf balls came down on the Vineyard.  And the lightning fried some of our wiring and blew some of our fuses.  It took us until this morning to get all computers up and running again, so we had to close for much of yesterday.  What you didn’t see from outside was that we also had a minor flood in the basement.

So, I think next year for July 4th, I’ll celebrate by hiding under the covers. Or, as one onlooker said, “Maybe that place ought to have an exorcism.”

So, I’m asking whatever power resides above, for the rest of this grand opening celebration, would you mind not throwing anything down fom the sky that could be used in the instrumental case with the verb “to smite”?

That’d be awesome. Thanks.