Power Outage Freeze

I was having a lovely conversation with a friend via IM last night around 7:15 p.m. when suddenly the power went out. We get a lot of power outages out here in the sticks, but this was particularly inconvenient because we were just starting in on a cold snap and our ancient converted schoolhouse is heated with electric space heaters in most rooms, but also, luckily, an old square wood burning stove in the kitchen addition.

Anyway, so I got offline (man, do I love that UPS battery backup out here!) after my last words to my friend were something like, “Oh, *%$#@! Power Outage – Gotta go!” Turned everything off, and reported the outage to the power company – I’m always the first one to report – I never wait to see if they’re coming back on quickly because they never do. After a while they called back and said they’d have crews out between 10:59 p.m. and 1:59.

What I didn’t know is that they meant 1:59 in the afternoon the next day because apparently they had to wait until they could get a helicopter out to check out the lines in the daytime. That’s what they TOLD me at least – John’s convinced they just didn’t want to come out in the dark and bitter cold – heh. John brought another load of wood with him when he came home, so we had fuel at least. And we brought the turtles inside too, lest they get encased in solid ice in their little outdoor pond – they’re still pretty immobile in a large plastic container in the hallway.

But let me tell you, there’s only so much one wood-burning stove can do in an ancient, uninsulated schoolhouse with old wavy uninsulated glass windows when the temperature drops below freezing. We had to keep the water flowing in the plumbing but the kitchen pipes STILL froze (they’re thawed now at the moment – no bursting) AND of course, you have to keep feeding the wood-burning fireplace or it stops being warm. So we basically did that all night – I got about an hour of sleep and John got a few, but that was it.

And… the low temp hit 12 degrees this morning at 5 a.m. outside. EEEK! I won’t even tell you how cold it got in other areas of the house – you wouldn’t believe me. So after the sun rose we went into town to do errands that we’d planned on doing (since we still didn’t have power) and just got back around 2 and the power was on finally. Let me tell you we came home with another ton of wood and a nice bottle of wine too. 😉

Anyway – I’m writing this because I haven’t really slept since 7 a.m. yesterday, I drank two large cokes while in town on errands, so I’m exhausted and wired at the same time – LOL. (Which you’d think would be a good combination for coming up with Out of Context Quotes, but it isn’t – those still require a LITTLE sense!) So… I’m going to stop typing now and take a deep breath, and then probably collapse while John builds another fire – go John go!