Hold the Mayo

August 30, 2011

Goodnight Irene

The last update to the post below was at 11:00 pm on Saturday as hurricane Irene drew near. She was a category 1 storm at that point but showing signs of weakening. In the early morning hours an Sunday she hit with whatever force she had left. Depending oh which reports you listened to she was still a hurricane or she had fallen to a tropical storm. Some were arguing that it was a difference without a distinction. If the top winds were 75 mph it was a hurricane if they were 74 it was a tropical storm.

And they have a valid point. I don’t really know that answer. I know that sometime around 5:00 Sunday morning, with the wind howling outside my bedroom window, we lost our electricity. As I am typing this it is 8:45 Monday evening. I am sitting in the dark at the dining room table, the only light coming from the screen and the backlit keyboard. The utility company cannot yet provide an estimate for when power will be restored.

I am only writing this now because I spent a good chunk of the afternoon at my mother-in-laws business two towns over where they have power charging my battery. It had been run down to nothing playing a movie for the kids!

About those kids. We have two very electronic children. Or perhaps I should say two children who are very much a product of the electronic age. Two days without electricity has been something of a trauma for them and despite my best efforts I have yet to be able to convince them to see it as a great adventure. There was a brief glimmer of hope when the watched the great delight with which I took my first sip of coffee this morning.

I did run out to a Duncan Donuts or Starbucks or convenience store in some part of town that had their power. I heated a pot of water on the gas grill and slowly poured it into the filter basket of the drip coffee maker. I know that on the McGiver scale of rugged ingenuity it ranks fairly low, but my goal was simply to show them that life goes on, and with a little imagination its can go on with some degree of normalcy.

The real twist to the situation is that school is scheduled to start this week. The son is supposed to go for orientation as a new middle school student on Wednesday and full school days are scheduled to start on Thursday. I think that schedule is going to have to change as it is likely that larger areas of town, including several schools, will not have power by then.

But if there is school or not, tomorrow marks the third day with no power, which means the third day with no hot water. Tomorrow we need to deal with getting clean. Tomorrow, could be cold showers for everyone day. Somehow I don’t think that is going to help with developing that sense of a great adventure.

The last problem we have to deal with is heat. It’s hot out. All of our air conditioners run on electricity. If there was ever an appliance that would make sense to run by soar power, it’s the air conditioner. It would be poetic to have the very thing causing the heat, provide the power to beat the heat. Opening windows is problematic due to the number of people nearby who are running generators 24/7. I can’t blame them, my neighbor is still trying to get the water out of his basement. But the noise is annoying.

That’s all for now. I’ll keep adding more until we get the power back and I can post this.

UPDATE: Power was restored at about 3:00 this afternoon. We had gone back down the road to recharge batteries when we got the call from my very happy wife. The school board announced that schools were now scheduled to open on Tuesday, September 6 (subject to change). The orientation for incoming middle school students has been cancelled. This worries me a bit because on whatever day schools eventually open there will be a lot of disoriented new students at middle school.

We are focused now on getting back to normalcy. I need to check the fridge and see what needs to be tossed. There is laundry to be done, but there is always laundry to be done.

There is a back log of work.

The grass needs cutting.

I need sleep.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 05:35 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment

A day late, so just for future reference:

When we used to spend weeks up at the camp in Maine, we washed up with well water. Very c-c-cold coming out of the ground. So I used to fill buckets with the well water early in the morning and let them sit in the sun. By the time anyone was ready to wash up, the water was toasty warm.

Posted by: Tuning Spork at August 30, 2011 07:08 PM (mCr+u)

2 Luckily for us the power came back on before we tried any of he alternatives!. Actually cold showers would have been a last resort - one of the local gyms, Planet Fitness, is making their locker rooms and showers available to non-members. We probably would have gone there.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at August 31, 2011 05:51 AM (KGD+C)

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