Ahhh... electricity, the simple things in life make me happy.
I feel like we've been in the twilight zone today. Our whole world is covered with about an inch to inch and a half of ice (pictures to come..)which is really pretty.
Seth, Levi, Christi and I took the dogs for a walk this morning and took pictures.
Then we spent the rest of our day trying to stay warm and manage meals and boredom. The electricity went off about 4am and just now (7:00pm) came back on.
We have natural gas off of our oil wells but it has to be pumped with an electric motor or we don't have enough pressure. We shut all the heaters off but the one in Em's room, one small one at Levi's house,and one at Mother's house. The gas pressure was low but they stayed on all day (which was amazing as cold as it was). We have a big wood stove in the living room for back up so we were plenty warm.
I heated up the chicken noodle soup on the wood stove for lunch, took a while but we had nothing but time today.
We ran an electric cord from the bus generator to the house and ran one TV at a time to keep the kids entertained.
We watched "Jet Li's Fearless" in the living room, then the kids watched something back in Em's room, and then we hooked up Seth's TV so they could play Wii sports.
In between movies we would hook it up to the frig to keep things cold.
It was kind of fun having to rough it a little and use our imaginations to manage things but everyone sent up a shout of praise when the lights came back on.
Dear PEC man (local electric company), I really didn't mean it when I cursed you and your family earlier.
6 comments:
I'm glad you scared the PEC man because our electricty came back too.
kelly - did you guys have all the kids this weekend, in this mess?
Lucky you have all that back-up. I just talked to Brandy and thankfully her electricity was only out for a few hours. They have electric everything. I don't know what they will do if they are out of electricity for an extended amount of time.
Glad your electricity is back on!
Sandy.. I'm one of those people who really believe in the back up system. I start every fall storing extra food and water, candles, matches, lamp oil... that sort of thing. Just call me paranoid but this weekend everyone is glad I'm like that.
I'm with you A. I think it's better to be safe than sorry.
Where I live we are in an earthquake zone, a tsunami zone, and volcano zone. We also have snowstorms that for some mysterious reason our city does not have the budget to deal with.
For these reasons, we have a year round disaster plan and disaster kit that will keep us and our pets comfortably alive for 3 + days. We have solar powered lights, a crank TV that also has signal stuff, a solar bag that can charge all of our cell phones and other small electronics-- and the basics and not so basics (coffee!) of quasi comfortable life.
The peace of mind that this kit gives me and my husband is huge. We also have mini-kits in each car and I have one at work (I work on the 32nd floor of a high-rise).
We also have a plan of whom to call out of state to relay info, as those phone lines often work when local ones don't.
Our last big storm up here had people without power for 9 days. Many people died trying to heat their homes with BBQ grills and other stupid devices, many more burned their homes down.
Have a plan, have some stuff, and make sure your kids know what to do and what NOT to do.
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