Duh

A storm came through last Thursday evening. 70 MPH winds. I was awake when it hit and I heard this loud CRACK noise and then the lights flickered. No rain, no lightning, just wind. The rain and lightning came later. The lights kept going on and off and I started to worry that a branch fell on the wires coming to the house. Then I heard another CRACK and more flickering. This time I woke up Gary because it really scared me.

He looked out the windows and didn't see anything obvious. The lights had gone out but they eventually came back on. In the morning we saw the damage and learned the loud CRACKS were large branches breaking off trees. A neighbor's tree had half of it break off and fall into our yard. The houses across the street had no power. Luckily we did.

Friday night = round two! Another storm came through. This one was louder due to the numerous lightning hits and thunder. The kind of thunder that rattles the entire house. Then about 2:30 AM the lights went out. The stayed out for 24 hours. It is funny how much I depend on electricity for things. With daybreak it was easy to get light in the house, you just have to open the shades. But with evening we had to rely on candles and an oil lamp. No air conditioning and no cable and no internet. The latter was the hardest for me.

So I convinced Gary to go with me to Panera to get a drink and use their free wifi. We bought our drinks and sat down to learn that their internet was not working either. BUMMER. So we went shopping. We returned home about 5PM hoping the lights would be back on. But no. So we decided to go get some dry ice and see if we could save all our fridge and freezer things.

Then we went to a coffee house in the evening that has live music. I took my laptop just in case. YAY! They had free wifi and it was working! So I got my critical emails done and then enjoyed the music.

What was interesting was all the times we thought of things to do at home and then went "Duh, no power." Example was Gary knew we were going out shopping and that maybe we wouldn't be back in time for the football game. So he said "let me set up the DVR to tape the game". I laughed and said "Duh..."

Then later as the day heated up we knew it would be uncomfortable trying to sleep with no air conditioning. So I came up with the brilliant idea to use a fan to keep us cool. "Duh..."

It is hard to remember all the times that happened during the no power event. Sadly it happened more often than I would like to admit.