Power Outage

Regular readers of the blog (i.e. my immediate family members) may have noticed that we missed a post on the most recent Saturday and Monday.  Please accept our deepest apologizes but we were dealing with an unusually  severe winter weather situation last week that caused us to miss those dates.  Even though LJ had the entire week off from going to work, we weren't able to create any new posts because we lost our internet connection mid-day on Thursday and our power shortly after that.  We were without power for 48 hours and without an internet connection for 96 (which interrupted our attempt to power through Friday Night Lights on Netflix streaming).  Considering that nearly all our forms of entertainment come from the interwebs, that outage was nearly as painful as not having electricity.

Ten inches of snow really doesn't seem like much, but in this area it is practically a once in a generation storm.  The snow combined with freezing rain and high winds caused numerous trees to topple which led to power outages across the region.  We were quite lucky to be without power for such a short time considering that many people lost power for nearly a week.

We also considered ourselves extremely lucky to have a wood burning fireplace in our apartment.  This fall I mentioned to my dad that we were enjoying our fireplace on cold evenings and he suggested that we keep a stash of wood on hand in case we lost power over the winter (almost like he had the ability to see in to the future but I'm going to chalk it up to him having more life experience).  Since we had already run through our small stack of wood we contacted our landlord who was able to deliver a truckload to our backyard.  As soon as we lost power we were able to get our fire started and we kept it stoked nearly the entire 48 hours.  We also set up our couch closer to the fireplace and spread blankets and sleeping bags on the ground to create a bed that was as close to the heat source as possible without singeing our toes.

After the first night, we woke up a little chilly and broke out the camp stove to make a pot of coffee on the patio (I realize it is a cliche but you seriously do not want to interact with LJ if she hasn't had coffee).  We spent most of the day on the couch reading (I finished Soccernomics and started The Audacity of Hope; LJ blew through One Hundred Years of Solitude and Pygmalion) and made Ramon noodles on the camp stove for dinner.

By Saturday we'd had enough of being cooped up so we ventured out to find an open Starbucks for coffee and breakfast pastries.  We assumed we might have to travel 20 or 30 miles to the south to find business that had power but we ended up only needing to travel 2 or 3 blocks.  We realized we were right on the edge of the power outage so we had high hopes for power returning soon.  We wandered around the neighborhood and took a few photos of some of the damage which you can see below.

After patiently waiting for the lights to come back on we gave up and ventured out to one of our favorite pizza places to enjoy Pizza Saturday.  By the time we returned that evening the power was back on.

A few other quick thoughts:

• Having a stash of beef jerky was extremely welcomed, as were the dried apples.
• The overwhelming majority of people I heard or read talk about the power outage commented that the thing they most looked forward to was a warm shower.  It led me to believe that heated indoor plumbing is probably what separates First World countries from the rest in the minds of most people.
• The public library is a truly wonderful place.  I spent a number of hours there to catch up with things online before our internet service was restored.  I had a friend in college that commented once that he would always support levies and taxes for schools and libraries.  I think the more time you spend in either the more likely you are to agree with his sentiments.

The campstove set up outside

Across the driveway from our apartment

In front of city hall

The library