Power out,,,

[sleigh]

Last night about 2:00 AM, a nasty storm -- continuous lightning and thunder, a torrential downpour, and lots of wind.  The power went out very quickly, and is still  out now at 11:30 AM; I'm posting this on my laptop, which still has about an hour and half of battery, and using a neighbor's wireless network (evidently the next street over still has power) which I can just barely access.  We lost several branches from the tulip tree in the front yard; Devon's says his girlfriend Becca's house has a tree on it -- he isn't certain  how bad the damage is...

Ah, well -- once power is restored (so we can turn the AC back on and make sure everything in the refrigerator and the freezer downstairs is OK), we'll be heading over to MidWestCon to see people...

Comments

Alas!

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I so sympathize. We have had much internet trouble and one hours-long power outage here this summer. Illinois weather, especially the wind, is getting meaner. I hope you make it through okay.

[(Anonymous)]

Sympathies from out west. Googling lead me to "No injuries were reported. There were about 38,000 without power. There is a lot of flooding. We can't access our pole lines. Normally we can drive through there. Now we have to walk with waders."

No injuries is a good thing.

Though our power outages aren't as frequent as a few years ago (remember the headlines about rolling blackouts?), we still do get them. Not so much from big storms, which I have romanticized and now miss. Usually it's a transformer blowing out somewhere, taking out a small section of the grid.

I've taken to using these as rehearsal for bigger emergencies, like an earthquake. Each time I take note of what was hardest to live without and try to address that by adding to my emergency kit. This is in addition to the obvious fundamentals like water, flashlights, batteries, blankets, etc.

Early on was the telephone. Cordless phones don't work without power. So we have a couple of old-style ("princess") phones that will work if there's a dial tone. For a small power outage my cell phone can also be a back-up. But, as I learned in Loma Prieta 20 years ago, cell towers can't handle emergency traffic even if they're still functional. So, I cling to my traditional land line ... "i.c.e.".

Next was the almost total lack of distracting entertainment. Books are great in the daylight, but what about after dark? My eyes can no longer do an Abe Lincoln and read by candle-light, so there's one of those little book-lamp things in the kit. More recently, I've added the iPod as "something to grab". (As that list grows, I'm considering creating a specific docking/charging station to "park" all the stuff together. Cell, iPod, etc.) My u.p.s. will run my tower and monitor for quite a long time, but it has this annoyingly loud beep every few minutes ... must figure out how to turn the volume down when I want to stop hearing that.

Hope you can find a way to charge your laptop before its battery is gone!

[richrichmond.livejournal.com]

it was pretty nasty. We actually got the kids up and headed to the basement it looked so bad. the 4 Richmond humans and 1 dog "slept" on a full size futon for about an hour until it passed.