I *knew* I should have collected more power-ups!

[amanda_lodden]

As anyone not living under a rock probably knows by now, the Midwest was hit by raging storms yesterday. We got lucky, a lot of wind but no real damage (I napped through the entire storm, personally). Jim's area, just a few miles away, got hit much worse; as we drove over to help him chainsaw up a branch that had fallen in his driveway, we saw trees uprooted and turned over, trees on houses and cars, roads closed due to fallen power lines, and lots of houses, businesses, and traffic lights out of power. Jim got off pretty lucky; his neighbors across the street had half a tree hit their house, and their air conditioning condenser unit was smashed flat by another tree.

However, Jim's power was restored right around the time we got there, about 2 hours after the storm passed through. Our power went out as well, and we're still waiting for it to come back up. Last night was somewhat uncomfortable-- we hung out at Mike and Melissa'a house until 11pm, and then declined the offer of their spare bedroom in favor of our own bed. After all, the storm had dropped the temperature down to a comfortable 70 degrees and took the oppressive humidity out of the air, so we figured we'd be fine with the windows open.

Not so much. The humidity started creeping back up, and the one window in our bedroom that can be opened was insufficient to remove both of our body heat. I woke up after a few hours and crept downstairs to sleep on the floor in front of the open patio door. A little bit later, John came down and laid on the couch, but didn't sleep. We ended up in the pool, which cooled us off enough to let John go back upstairs to bed, and me to sleep on the couch. Sort of. The hum of generators in the background (many of our neighbors have them; we "keep meaning to" get one, though I'm just as likely to put in solar panels for that kind of money, frankly) is white noise until one of them runs out of gas, at which point the whine and sputtering is enough to wake me up.

Since we have a well, no power = no well pump = no water. We've used up what was stored in the tank, so this morning I got up entirely too early (with entirely too much of a back-ache), packed up my travel bag and a change of clothes and a towel, and came into the office to use the small shower here (with the 10-gallon hot water tank; there's no such thing as a hot shower here. I did pretty good, I was halfway through rinsing the shampoo out of my hair before the water went completely cold). John is opting to swim as his morning bath.

The drive in to the office was interesting; most of the area has power, but there are small pockets here and there without-- we're in a pocket as well, since the area a mile east of us and the area two miles west of us both have power. And, of course, despite everyone knowing that dead traffic lights are supposed to be treated as four-way stops, no one actually knows what to do at a four-way stop, so there's a lot of confusion whenever a light is out.

Keep your fingers crossed for our power coming back soon.

Comments

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

And, of course, despite everyone knowing that dead traffic lights are supposed to be treated as four-way stops, no one actually knows what to do at a four-way stop, so there's a lot of confusion whenever a light is out.

Oh yeah, we experienced that one!