~“The Blog That Watches Back”~

Tuesday, March 2

A Tale of Two Storms

Yeah, I know. I promised pics of the redone library. Well, have *I* got a story to tell You.

We got hit with 2 snow storms.

The first, on Tuesday, dumped 6 inches, and took out our electricity, cable, phone, internet, everything. We got the elec back, and the second storm arrived.....a record breaking storm, by all accounts. We got 36 inches of snow in the first 24 hrs, and 3 inches more, last Thursday into Friday into Saturday. No power for days. We had to decide...lose all the food in both freezers and all my houseplants, plus pay for a hotel room to stay warm in and take out food for the duration of the blackout...or buy a generator. We bought a generator.[unfortunately, my iron sucks up 1200 watts, so ironing was out during the outage while on the gennie.] Our county was under a state of emergency, which means only first responders are allowed to drive......so of COURSE Steve went to work. I was LIVID. But I did get closure with a lovely Amazon order, that included a solar powered battery charger and a slew of rechargeable batteries.

It appears, the way this house is wired, that our bedroom and the dining room are on the same circuit as the library. Which is the only room heated with electric baseboard heat, as opposed to oil/boiler heat for the rest of this house [ I'd LOVE to grab the person who did that and shake them till the marbles they call brains fall out of their heads] We cannot run the library with the generator, so no light in the dining room or bed room, necessitating flashlights. Even with the electricity back, when I go on my night time ambles, I'm still grabbing for a flashlight.

We got our power back Sunday night. I was wide awake and decided to come out into the living room around 11:30 pm. I never bring my glasses, I know every little nook of this house, and glasses are useless in the dark. You have to pass the music room, which faces the street, to get to the livingroom. I realized something was weird, the room was MUCH brighter than a full moon would make it. That was because the street light came back on. Power! Power came back! I wasn't SURE, as I couldn't see the light, as I didn't have my glasses on. There is no one more cautious, than the blind person who is running for their glasses, hehehe. Steve woke up thinking something was wrong. I told him I thought the elec was back, but go back to sleep, we could deal with the gennie in the morning. His reply was Fuck That! We did a happy dance turning that noisy [but VERY welcome] thing off. Of course, Naked ninja putz neighbor left his on all night. He went and BOUGHT a friggin gennie, had someone hook it up for him [and THEY were not very on the ball, everything was hand-tightened....gennies vibrate, you need to wrench tighten the fittings... so Steve went over and fixed him up] and he NEGLECTED to ask how to return to main power. Monday morning, he turns the gennie off. 5 minutes later he turned it back on, and it stayed on until someone showed up to turn it off and switch him back to elec. That is the HEIGHT of irresponsibility, playing with a machine like that without knowing what you're doing. Even *I* can hook up the gennie and return to main power, and *I* am a chickenshit, I do NOT like to play with electricity.

[note: There are 2 ways to hook up a gennie. The Right way,[that would be Steve] and the wrong way...backfeeding your house by plugging the gennie into an outlet. I would have offered to help putz [do you know, I know what his moms name is, but I don't know his name, he is always putz to me?] but I don't know how his "expert", that didnt even tighten the thing up properly, hooked him up. So I kept my hands and good intentions to myself.]

Thank you God for sending me Steve, who appears to love nothing more than to make wires, hook things up to the breaker panel, and grunt in a Tim Taylor/ Home Improvement kinda way :)

We didn't get our tv and net back until Tues. morning [the eta for that was wed., so we are thrilled] I was JONESING for some net. I wound up in Steves office using the wifi his dealership offers customers Monday night, and Bam, tues the net was back.
Boo! Poor Boo! She lost power, and was told there was no ETA for it's return, so she came home to us. Her power was restored.....when she was snowed in here, with no heat or power, with us. Stevie lost power too, and he has elec heat, plus well water with an elec pump, so no water either.

It was about as tough as you can image. But. We are SO DAMN lucky, compared to most. No part of our home was hurt, and we are all fine.There was a gennie available when we needed one and we had the moolah to buy it. We had it better than most.

Of the 48,000 customers Central Hudson services in my county, 47,000of us lost power for an extended time. The local paper is vilifying a politician for wanting hearings about EXACTLY how C.H prepares the infrastructure for something like this, and how they maintain it. I APPLAUD him. There is NO WAY that friggin utility is doing it's job, when most of their customers are off line. The neighboring utility company did MUCH better.I wonder why that newspaper didn't compare percentages of customers off line between the two utilities [and the neighboring towns got 29 to 34 inches of snow, that is comparable to what we got for statistical purposes.

So there's my story. I'll take actual Camera pics of the library, as opposed to the cell pics that didn't turn out so well, and show you the newest arrivals at the Shack in the next bloggie :o)

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