Henri

Tropical storm/future hurricane Henri is heading my way and is forecast to hit my neck of the woods tonight. 

Last time a hurricane hit here (in 1985), we lost power for three days. A lot has changed in the power infrastructure since then, so we may not lose power at all or the outage will be shorter. Nevertheless, my daily posts may be interrupted if we lose power. I already have a post queued up for Monday, but beyond that is in the hands of Mother Nature and our power provider.

And so it goes.

Not Very Ladylike

I live on a dead end off of another dead end. Our dead end has underground utilities. Beyond our dead end are utility poles.

During the 25 years I have lived here, we have never had a power outage originating on our dead end. Any outages have always originated on the portion of the system with utility poles.

Two Sundays ago, we had snow, freezing rain and high winds. Monday morning, we lost power, which meant no electricity, no water, no heat, no landline, no Internet, etc. My iPhone was the only thing that worked and when I checked the electric company's outage map on the Internet, I was surprised that only my dead end, the underground portion of the system was out. The portion of the system on the poles still had power.

I phoned in our outage and the trucks showed up mid-morning Monday, left an hour later, showed up again at noon and again left an hour later. The electric company had no estimate when we'd get our power back.

I began feeding our wood stove to provide some warmth to keep the pipes from freezing and managed to keep the indoor temperature around 50℉. But at sunset, we decided to spend the night at my sister's house rather than try to sleep in our icebox.

Tuesday morning, I received a robot call from the electric company that we would have power by 1 PM, so after coffee and, we thanked my sister for her hospitality, drove back home and found that we already had power (Yay!). However, I did notice that down at the end of our dead end, there were about ten vehicles, ten hardhats and a payloader digging on the side of the road. I don't know what was wrong, but they did not finish digging until late Wednesday afternoon.

Anyway, by the time we got back home, I did not feel very ladylike. I had not shaved, showered or moisturized in days. I was wearing my girl jeans, but nothing else from milady's wardrobe. So when we lose power, it means no electricity, no water, no heat, no landline, no Internet and no femulating!

Wearing Tahari (Source: Us)

Bert Savoy, early 20th Century professional femulator

Back On

Electricity returned to my home after I had gone to sleep last night. I woke up with a start at 10:45 PM and went around the house shutting off lights, setting clocks, engaging the garage door opener, etc.

I also visited the blog before I went back to sleep to moderate outstanding comments and kill the Halloween countdown clock.

I received some of your Halloween femulation photos and will begin posting them in The Femulated spot tonight (and finally replace my 1996 attempt femulating Mrs. JFK). If anyone else has Halloween femulation photos that they would like to see posted here, please send them along.

Anyway, it is great to be back --- sorry about the interruption to your blog reading.

My Halloween Weekend

Snow began falling at noon on Saturday at my house. By dawn Sunday, 14 inches of snow was on the ground.

We lost power and Internet access at 2 AM Sunday. We still do not have power or Internet access this morning (I am writing this from work).

I took my sister to the hospital for her morning surgery yesterday. Her doctor gave us the big thumbs up after the 90-minute surgery.

We went home to deal with the power outage, then returned to the hospital when we found out what time she would be out of the recovery room and moved to her room.

She showed up at 5:30 PM and was in great spirits. We visited with her until she chased us out so we could score some food (McDonald’s) and go home to stoke the wood stove to try to heat the house.

I thank you all for your concern and positive thoughts  regarding my sister’s surgery. So far, so good.

It is going to take awhile for me to catch up with all your comments and e-mails, but I assure I will do so as soon as I get Internet access at home.

By the way, because of the storm and power outages, the governor postponed Halloween, so we had no trick or treaters visiting us last night, but that did not stop me from breaking open a bag of Almond Joys!

And so it goes.