2012_11_07 Wednesday

Life is slowly returning to nearly-normal:

We actually only have partial power right now. We have heat and hot water; we have lights; we have some outlets (1/2 of the living room and kitchen, and none in the master and basement); we have the microwave, a small college fridge, and our large freezer. We do not have power to the stove, the refrigerator, the disposal (although I ran an extension cord to fire it up b/c water/gunk was backing up), or the entire basement -- including sump pumps (which I jerryrigged to working outlets) and watering system -- nor any lights/heat in the master bedroom (I'm sleeping on a fold-out couch in the guest room! gee is that uncomfortable. Sorry, past guests!!!) or power to the front porch fan or outside lights. I realized that we do have power in the den, but our ceiling fan/lights were turned out by the pulley rather than by the power switch, so I had thought there was no power in there (still no TV, though). doh.
I had been meaning to clean out the fridge/freezer for awhile, so I did that yesterday (lovely furries growing in there!). Luckily, it's cold enough outside, that I can leave some things inside the front porch overnight. 
Our neighbors are experiencing the same problems. I saw some power guys in town last night, and they said it must be a faulty connection to our house (and our neighbor's too), but don't expect it to be repaired for awhile since we do have some power. Power guys told our neighbors today that it's an internal problem. Our electrician said (over the phone and in person) it's an external problem. Gesh, I love the pass-the-buck going on here. We are now in the queue for the power guys to come back to hook up that one wire.


Jonathan went back to school today. His backpack was laden with papers from a week ago! Everyone gathered near the old stop today, so it was nice to see so many faces again. During breakfast, I told him about the election results (we all voted together yesterday), and he said: "Oma and Opa are probably really sad today, right?" What a smart kid.

Meanwhile, Elise and I raked all the leaves off the driveway and front yard. It's a massive pile, and we sure got our exercise for the day (and we found a dead bird!) At the end, it started snowing. Certainly, nothing to accumulate, but enough to see. 

One nice thing about all this is that we've spoken to our neighbors more in the past two weeks than in four years! We've built a little community because of the storm.