Thursday, February 15, 2007

No Power = No Post

You're right, I don't have a post for yesterday. Sure, I could put something up (like the long anti-V-day rant I had prepared) and change the post date so no one would be the wiser, but why? See, half an inch of ice means a lot of extra weight on the trees, which means limbs break, which means limbs break over power lines, which means power lines break, which means, you got it, no power.

At 0350 yesterday, the heat when off, the clock went out, and the only sounds were the pelting ice outside and the cracking of branches. We already knew we weren't going to work in this mess, so we plugged a u.p.s. into the TV to check the weather and went back to sleep, around 0430. The power came back on for two seconds and then went out again. That's all she wrote.

No, it's not!

Thankfully, we have a fireplace. We didn't have a whole lot of wood (because someone never took the time to chop the many many logs in the back so we would have wood), but we had a few purchased bundles and some self-burning non-wood logs. We started early in the morning and kept it going well into the night. It actually got to a cold 60+ degrees in the house, near 70 in the room with the fireplace, but it was so cold outside it didn't make much of a difference.



Sometime in the afternoon, we knocked the ice off the cars and my mother and I took a walk to see what the roads looked like (covered in ice). When they weren't covered in ice, they were covered in branches like this.


And here's a lovely shot of the garden lantern in front of our house. This ice was everywhere: encasing signs, trees, cars, the chimney, blades of grass. Everywhere.


Today, the ice has a diamond sparkle to it, glass-like shards fall from the trees and litter the ice-encrusted ground. We didn't go to work today either. Not because of the ice on the roads but because the power didn't come back on until after 2200 last night. None of us slept very well, huddled by the dying, wood-less fire like we were.

Even the cats had a very bad day. Miss Luna would have spent it hiding in my closet if I'd let her (we closed all the doors to try to contain the heat). Callie knew the best place was by the fire, and stayed there most of the day.

There were a few good things to happen during the course of the day. One of our neighbors had an extra indoor gas-powered stove that they let us use. We could cook food! And heat water for tea and coffee! THANK YOU, NEIGHBOR!

The other good thing was that I had a date. Yeah, that's right, a date. It was last minute, and because of that and the weather, we only had time for dinner. But dinner was great. He took me to a nice little place that he knew well. They had power. The restaurant was warm, the wine was red, and the mussels were hot. And he got me home decently close to my bedtime. There was a cute little store attached to the restaurant filled with some random and silly things. And one little thing that I had to buy. Which, by the way, I didn't. So this V-day ended with a very special V-day gift: Smurfette the Witch.

It was a great ending to an otherwise miserable day.

I have to go to work tomorrow, but I should be able to have a hot shower and a good night's sleep tonight.

18+ hours of no power = no fun!

4 comments :

Willow Goldentree said...

I don't think I've ever seen an ice storm like that. Although miserable those are some gorgeous pictures especially of the lantern outside.

Unknown said...

The lantern shot was one of my favorites. I have a ton more that I'll have to organize some day.

We haven't had a storm like that in a few years. I can still see the ice sparkling at the top of the trees in the back, occasionally hear it shattering against the house. That's the ice that I've talked about that we tend to get around here, though yesterday was pretty bad. And more proof that weather is unpredictable. The news wasn't calling for this magnitude at all.

It's a good thing the power came back though. We were running out of batteries.

Now if the wind would stop, it might warm up a bit out there!

Willow Goldentree said...

I was wondering, does your state do a good job at clearing the interstate freeways? Like, how safe will it be for you to drive to work tomorrow?

I remember living in So. Cal and we'd get these huge rain storms every year! It just boggled my mind how predictable those storms were and yet the cities had no idea how to deal with and clean the street.

Unknown said...

The roads should be clear. We could have made the drive today, if we could get out of the neighborhood, but we were way to tired and cranky anyway. It was almost like being sick; you feel dirty and constantly shivering and not being able to sleep. I took the last hot shower of yesterday, so at least I wasn't actually dirty. :)

The side streets are usually the problem around here. The county where my office is even deliberately does not plow and salt the side streets. We should be just fine tomorrow, though.