Hey, the lights are on!
Woke up this morning to my son knocking on the bedroom door.
We had some terrific windstorms last night, and the power was out. Only his alarm clock seemed to have a functional battery backup. So I dressed and went downstairs to make scrambled eggs by the light of a decorative Christmas oil lamp, while the boys took showers. No shower for me - I wasn't going out in those winds with wet hair! It's short, but letting it dry like that would have been, well, ugh, no.
The winds last night were gusting up to 60 mph, and obviously a wire or transformer somewhere took it tough. I called in the power outage about 7 am, and the estimate was 6 hours until it would be fixed. 1:00, no big deal, I thought. So we all ate our eggs by candlelight, and went off to church. The radio said 150,000 customers were without electricity, but two blocks away from my house, they had power. That means my outage was a small isolated one, and I began to mentally up the estimated time we'd get ours back.
Guess what - there was no power at church either! And since we were there early so the kids could practice with the choir, I was free and got to help move all the candelabras we could find into the church to light the very dark room so that the service could be held. It was actually kind of neat. People were quieter, to hear better without the microphones working. The candles made a lovely atmosphere.
And when we got home at noon, the power was still out. The radio had upped the number of people without power to 230,000, and estimated some wouldn't be fixed until Thursday. I started to get a little worried. Then I discovered the cell phone system was down as well. No internet, no phones, no TV (didn't have to watch the Lions lose again) - I felt quite disconnected. It would have been peaceful, except the house was 65 degrees and the temperature outside was dropping. Plus, we were supposed to be going to my brother's house for a birthday party for my neice, and I didn't know what time.
We have a gas-fired steam boiler for heat. The only thing electric about our system is the thermostat and an automatic flue damper. We can run the whole thing from a car battery and an inverter. Unfortunately, the battery we keep on a charger in the basement for just such a use was shorted or something, because it was dead. We tried to get the battery out of the van (which is not running, up on stands in the backyard right now, another long story) but the side-post connector wouldn't come out - it just rounded over when we tried to take it off. There is another non-running car, and we got the battery out of that, but it was mostly discharged. So I sat in the car trying to charge it, while middle son worked on the van battery some more.
Then there was a half hour of ups and downs. We got the last battery up to 12 volts, and took it downstairs to connect. No go- it's been sitting too long,and the load just pulled it right back down. Son got the battery out of the van, and it had a good charge - Yay! It has the wrong type of connectors on it - Boo! We have clamps and clips and can fix up new connectors - Yay! Except the soldering iron runs on electricity - Rats! Wait, there are crimp-on versions of the same connectors - Whee! Anyway, finally, the battery was connected through an inverter and the furnace plugged in, and the house could begin to be heated up.
I was still worried about the birthday party (neice is 16 now) so I went out to try to find a payphone to call my brother. I knew they were few and far between these days (work has removed them all since every one just uses cells now) but I ended up going miles before I found one that worked. Lost a quarter in one broken one, too. And I reached my brother to find out the pizza and cake started in a half hour. Now my brother lives in BFE (a good thirty minutes away) and I still had to go home and roust out the kids. I couldn't call them to warn them to be ready, because the phones were still out. So we ended up being a little late for the party.
Niece had gotten one of those video games for her birthday that is like Guitar Hero, but a whole band, with guitar, bass, drums and vocals - I don't have any idea what it is called, but it's fun to play. Even on easy mode, it wasn't easy, but we just laughed about getting booed off stage. I even knew a few of the songs on the list!
It was on the way home that I got a text message on my phone that the power was back on (only took 12 hours, so their estimate of 6 was only 100% off). Hubby had figured out how to send it from the computer, as phone calls were still not going through the cell network. But now even that is working, so we're back to 21st-century technology all around.
I'm glad - I've got to go to work tomorrow, and I wasn't looking forward to the bad hair day.
Hope everyone else is enjoying the screwy weather!
We had some terrific windstorms last night, and the power was out. Only his alarm clock seemed to have a functional battery backup. So I dressed and went downstairs to make scrambled eggs by the light of a decorative Christmas oil lamp, while the boys took showers. No shower for me - I wasn't going out in those winds with wet hair! It's short, but letting it dry like that would have been, well, ugh, no.
The winds last night were gusting up to 60 mph, and obviously a wire or transformer somewhere took it tough. I called in the power outage about 7 am, and the estimate was 6 hours until it would be fixed. 1:00, no big deal, I thought. So we all ate our eggs by candlelight, and went off to church. The radio said 150,000 customers were without electricity, but two blocks away from my house, they had power. That means my outage was a small isolated one, and I began to mentally up the estimated time we'd get ours back.
Guess what - there was no power at church either! And since we were there early so the kids could practice with the choir, I was free and got to help move all the candelabras we could find into the church to light the very dark room so that the service could be held. It was actually kind of neat. People were quieter, to hear better without the microphones working. The candles made a lovely atmosphere.
And when we got home at noon, the power was still out. The radio had upped the number of people without power to 230,000, and estimated some wouldn't be fixed until Thursday. I started to get a little worried. Then I discovered the cell phone system was down as well. No internet, no phones, no TV (didn't have to watch the Lions lose again) - I felt quite disconnected. It would have been peaceful, except the house was 65 degrees and the temperature outside was dropping. Plus, we were supposed to be going to my brother's house for a birthday party for my neice, and I didn't know what time.
We have a gas-fired steam boiler for heat. The only thing electric about our system is the thermostat and an automatic flue damper. We can run the whole thing from a car battery and an inverter. Unfortunately, the battery we keep on a charger in the basement for just such a use was shorted or something, because it was dead. We tried to get the battery out of the van (which is not running, up on stands in the backyard right now, another long story) but the side-post connector wouldn't come out - it just rounded over when we tried to take it off. There is another non-running car, and we got the battery out of that, but it was mostly discharged. So I sat in the car trying to charge it, while middle son worked on the van battery some more.
Then there was a half hour of ups and downs. We got the last battery up to 12 volts, and took it downstairs to connect. No go- it's been sitting too long,and the load just pulled it right back down. Son got the battery out of the van, and it had a good charge - Yay! It has the wrong type of connectors on it - Boo! We have clamps and clips and can fix up new connectors - Yay! Except the soldering iron runs on electricity - Rats! Wait, there are crimp-on versions of the same connectors - Whee! Anyway, finally, the battery was connected through an inverter and the furnace plugged in, and the house could begin to be heated up.
I was still worried about the birthday party (neice is 16 now) so I went out to try to find a payphone to call my brother. I knew they were few and far between these days (work has removed them all since every one just uses cells now) but I ended up going miles before I found one that worked. Lost a quarter in one broken one, too. And I reached my brother to find out the pizza and cake started in a half hour. Now my brother lives in BFE (a good thirty minutes away) and I still had to go home and roust out the kids. I couldn't call them to warn them to be ready, because the phones were still out. So we ended up being a little late for the party.
Niece had gotten one of those video games for her birthday that is like Guitar Hero, but a whole band, with guitar, bass, drums and vocals - I don't have any idea what it is called, but it's fun to play. Even on easy mode, it wasn't easy, but we just laughed about getting booed off stage. I even knew a few of the songs on the list!
It was on the way home that I got a text message on my phone that the power was back on (only took 12 hours, so their estimate of 6 was only 100% off). Hubby had figured out how to send it from the computer, as phone calls were still not going through the cell network. But now even that is working, so we're back to 21st-century technology all around.
I'm glad - I've got to go to work tomorrow, and I wasn't looking forward to the bad hair day.
Hope everyone else is enjoying the screwy weather!