Another Storm Cometh

I got back home from Florida a week ago, and I am just now getting back to a normal life and schedule--including posting! When I arrived home (7 pm last Thursday), there were so many trees down on our drive that Dave couldn't pick me up at the airport. The Uber driver even had difficulty getting me home as one of the main highways on the way home was closed due to downed power lines. At home the power had been out since 7:30 am. It was dark, but not too cold as Dave had a fire going. He had done some fancy cooking over the fire when the poower was out the night before (photos in the last post), and I continued the trend by toasting myself a bagel. Best bagel I ever ate--smokey, everything-bagel, and melty cream cheese.

Friday dawned still cold, but no longer freezing, and the last of the ice melted off the ground during the day. Dave was resigned to not being able to get to the office, and we hunkered down by the fire. I wore my Minus33 long underwear, jeans, a t-shirt, and a sweater. Zaga came over and I boiled water and heated cream on the fire for French press coffee. It was surprisingly easy and good--albeit the pan of water kept tipping and spilling into the fire when the logs moved...

When I went outdoors I layered up with a sweater vest, a hat, and combo mittens/fingerless gloves. This Montana girl was not daunted! (It actually felt kind of wimpy out for so much devastation and lingering problems--the power outage). In the afternoon an enterprising crew from a tree company came t the door and bid on removing all our downed trees. We took their bid, as did Dan and Zaga next door. They cleared our drive, vowed to come back the next day, and we haven't seen them since. Fortunately no money has changed hands and we can get a car down the drive, so we can wait.

Like other preppers (in our case posters), we went to Walmart that afternoon for supplies, and got candles (not regular ones as they were sold out, but they had a lot of the tall glass religious ones for $1.57 each--sweet!), a grill rack to put in the fireplace to cook over, and a cast-iron griddle to cook grilled cheese sandwiches on over the fire for dinner. 

That evening we lit every pillar candle I ever bought in our married life as well as the new glass-jar ones and some beeswax advent tapers I found from years ago. I thought I had finally thrown all the old pillars away last fall as they were very dusty and we hadn't lit them in YEARS. I was glad to find I hadn't gotten around to it. Proof positive that as soon as you throw something out, you are going to need it. I am never throwing anything away again. Then we moved the games table over in front of the fire and spent the evening playing Terraforming Mars. One game lasts a few hours, and we ended up going through quite a few of the beeswax advent tapers. Pro tip: Take a plate, melt the bottoms of several little advent tapers. and stick them to the plate for a great improve candelabra.

When we finally went to bed (the cotton sheets under a down comforter are FREEZING in a cold room!), we made bets as to when the power would come back on. Dave said Saturday afternoon, and I was sure it wouldn't be till Monday morning. We were both wrong as it was back by Saturday morning. We were lucky. We were only without power for three days. There are still 451 active outages in Austin with over 2,000 people affected a week after the outage started. Austin Energy hopes to have all power restored by Sunday the 12th. In the meantime, flood warnings and thunderstorms today. Definitely time to look into a way to flip our solar over from the grid to us so we can access it during an outage.