Off to a DARK Start

It's pretty funny to be sitting here in the dark writing my first post. I really wanted to make a good first impression - showing others how they could learn from my real life experiences. Instead I find myself in a potentially bad spot tonight, and I'm wondering why i wasn't better prepared.

We had an ice storm here in Maine last night, waking up to a day with no electricity. Now if that's not bad enough - we have well water. For those of you who have never gave this any thought, no electricity equals no water from the well. No water of course means (your going to learn a lot about me here) Eeeuuuu! .... no shower. This is why I'm not big on camping; I love the outdoors but I like being clean too!

So I'm surrounded by candles, with my laptop plugged into battery power. We seem to have been pretty well prepared at least in the wax, wicks and matches departments. Mrs Windowguy has been ordered to stop on her way home from Portland (yes, work with no shower for her) to buy "everything" we should have had on hand for such an event.

As usual, I was optimistic that power would be returned in short order. I took advantage of the no media situation and spent most of the day alone, enjoying the quiet, ignoring the fact that it would be dark by 5:00pm and the possibility of a long wait for the power to be restored. It's only by taking a ride in my car that I had a chance to get any news. The news is worse than I thought. 200,000 people spread out in Maine without power. Worse yet, the surrounding states are in even bigger trouble. If the situation is worse elsewhere, that means no crews from "away" will be rushing up to help.

You would think after THE ICE STORM (there will never be another) of '98 no one around here would ever be unprepared. Hmmm.


A list of things we DON'T have:

1. Emergency Drinking Water



2. Water for flushing toilets (yes, all you have to do is pour it in)



3. The flashlight supply seems to be missing (let me guess: on the boat? out at "camp"? buried in the garage?



4. Batteries



5. Dry firewood inside the house

The wood I can deal with, it's just that the stack will be a frozen mass outside, but the wood will burn. We don't use the wood stove (obviously) for our primary heat, more as a novelty and for emergencies. We are diversified though, besides the wood stove we also have a propane stove in the living room and our cook top is connected to the propane as well. The primary heat is oil/forced hot water and that of course needs electricity.

So we won't freeze and we wouldn't starve either. It's funny how you think you have "no food" until a situation like this arises and suddenly all the canned, dry and freezer items jump out at you like found money.

What I also have is my handy portable car battery jumper/starter/air compressor gizmo. No, the car is fine but I needed to plug my computer into something as the battery was about to die. This gadget plugs into the wall and charges itself up. It becomes a portable source of power (complete with jumper cables) and can turn the engine of a car with a dead battery for quite some time. It also serves as a mini compressor to fill a flat tire, has a built in light AND an AC electrical adapter. I don't have a "cigarette lighter" adapter for my laptop, but i do have a Black&Decker power inverter... so.. i plug the three together and whoola! Juice for the laptop amidst the darkness.

Mrs. Windowguy has just called and she has found a Wal-Mart that is opened. She has to improvise a bit because the shelves are a tad bare. So we will survive of course, but this time I will post a reminder list by the garage door where we can keep an eye on our emergency items for the next time.