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| The wake-up view from our porch where we slept to catch cool breezes. |
Last week was one of those weeks that makes the days go by. Friday night we had a huge windstorm and lost power. Saturday disappeared while we sat around at home stunned by the lack of phone/TV/cable/Internet service. Even our cellphones were inoperable! By Sunday we were functioning, although still without power or connectivity.
Freed from the bonds of cooking and cleaning I made it to the mall.
The mall, as well as every Starbuck's or restaurant we visited, was lined with people tethered to electric outlets. It was a strange site.
I'd suggest to mall management that they get some roll away carts like they have in airline terminals so when the next outage occurs they can invite folks over.
These people are plunked down in the middle of the mall plugged into a floor outlet.
I thought I had some adjustments with no power, clearly some people had major withdrawal.
In my dreams my outdoor kitchen would look like Martha Stewart's. All it would take is a potting table and a few modifications!
The reality: Gas grill, Camping Stove, Charcoal grill, Garden Hose. The recently deposed Carpenter Bees liked it well enough.
Eventually I figured out that my gas stove inside could be lit with a match and I moved A.M. coffee operations inside. Going up and down those stairs to the kitchen could really tire a person out.
Apart from no power and a fried Verizon box, something we didn't discover until later in the week after the power was restored, our house was undamaged. We used to have a tree on the right in front of the windows. It kept dropping limbs in similar storms and we finally decided to have it removed. Tree removal is much cheaper when the tree hasn't already fallen onto your house. In fact, we had multiple bids and the winner threw in grinding out the stump. Just try and get that for free after a big storm!
Down the road from us somebody had a major disaster. The blue tarps on their roof are where the tree landed. The Crane is getting ready to hoist the tree out. These folks won't be worrying about grinding the stump out because what you can't see is the roots that came out of the ground with the tree.
The trees don't look that big when you see them standing up, it's when they come down that you realize how big they are.
As you can see I don't have a huge freezer. The constraints of my galley kitchen design and my desire to maintain a triangular workspace dictated a side-by-side fridge/freezer. We cooked up the burgers and fish that thawed out and tossed most everything else.
So, I had a weekend with no power or connectivity. I was glad to go to work Monday, where I charged up every device I own. The Department provides a guest network in the cafeteria where you can access personal email and other sites they don't allow you to access from their secure network, so I got caught up on my email and on-line sites at lunch. As far as I know no planes fell out of the sky because I didn't check my on-line sites for three days.
The weekend wasn't a total loss. I read all 700 pages of "The Path to Power" and I cleaned out my fridge/freezer. Not too shabby if I do say so.
