Crawling out from beneath the ice

Our electricity went off Monday morning. I was shocked when I went outside and neighbors told me that the work crews said it would be Wednesday night before they got it back on again. The temperature was hovering around freezing and my work is done almost completely online.

It wasn't until later in the afternoon that we found a battery operated radio and listened to the news to find that most of this part of the state was in the same situation. My cell phone battery went dead that afternoon.

Tuesday morning, early, my wife, fearful that we'd be stuck, went to gas up the car that was on empty. It was 4am, and there was already a line. Later that morning I was able to recharge my cell phone in the car.

We have a fireplace, but it's mostly decorative and doesn't really give off much heat. I learned long ago how quickly a room can be heated just by boiling water, so we set four pans on the stove, and refilled them when they boiled low. For most of the day we were able to keep the house at around 70, but it got down to 50 or so at night. We have a really large stock pot that even on high, takes all night to boil down, so that was our heat for the night.

We had candles, so when it got dark we could see what we were doing. I was able to finish three Louis L' amour novels while we waited for the electricity to come back on. I went hunting wi-fi yesterday, but was only able to find one spot that had a really slow connection, just enough to send a few emails.

One the news they were saying it would be a week to ten days before they got the electricity back on, but last night, to our relief, it came back on. Our internet was spotting until this afternoon when it came on and stayed on.

Unfortunately, Linda and I both lost the whole week of work. I wasn't able to find any freelance jobs since I had no internet access and all of the schools are closed for the week, so Linda can't sub.

Losing a week of income right before Christmas is not a good situation, but hopefully we can make it up in the weeks to come. I do have two potential jobs, but they aren't very big. Our Christmas shopping is only about halfway done, so for now it'll need to be put on hold till we see what happens. One thing abut my kids, they've long since learned that Christmas isn't only about getting presents, so it'll still be a merry one, even if its sparse.

Posted by Danny Carlton at December 12, 2007 6:59 PM