I ended up heading to soldier boy's Saturday evening. When I left my house, around 6, it was snowing but the power was still well and on. Got to his house, made some dinner. A handful of hours later, his power craps out. Wonderful. I left my place, with power, for his, that's now dark. So we hop in his Jeep (no way in hell I'm driving my Honda, we're in his Wrangler that's made for this shit) and head back to my house, thinking I have power. Get to my street, no such luck. It's dark. The highway coming in? Pitch black. And slightly terrifying.
So instead of staying there, we grab my dog and head back out to his place. Roads are pretty horrible and tree limbs are starting to fall. We travel down an insanely steep hill with no problem (aside from the palpitations it gave me). Get to the highway and we start fishtailing going about 25. And I mean fishtailing. Full on sliding sideways, twice on each side. But it ended with quite possibly the most unintentionally well-timed musical lyric ever. I'd just put on Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie when we started sliding. He regained control and as soon as we were righted, PRESSURE! yells out over the speakers. Pushing down on me, pressing down on you . . . Enter really nervous laughter.
So we hunker down for the night and my dog's a total spaz what with new smells and a new place and roommates so he kept us up most of the night. I think I got about a half hour of sleep. At about 8 the next morning we head back to my house and apparently Mother Nature got dysentery all over Connecticut in the night because it rightly could have been the apocalypse. I've never seen so many trees down, and we had tornadoes and a hurricane within the past couple of months. But this? This is insane. We thought the downed limb in solder boy's driveway was bad (and it would have been if he hadn't gone to work that day). We get onto my street and this is what we drive into -
One end of the street. Yes, those lines are low enough to high five.
The other end of the street.
My house on the right. Yes, those down lines are right next to me. They were supposed to be attached to my house. They weren't when I got there.
The other end of the street.
My house on the right. Yes, those down lines are right next to me. They were supposed to be attached to my house. They weren't when I got there.Enter epic coldness. Up until yesterday I didn't have power. My light was a shit ton of candles (or I wanted it to be a shit ton of candles but my smoke detectors are far too sensitive) and I did a lot of reading. I have a nice backlog of reviews to post. Thankfully my hot water and range worked off of gas so I had that. Although taking a nice hot shower and then walking into 50 degree air was slightly terrible. I was wholly anticipating going at least a week without power simply because there are far less damaged areas and my house's problem was insanely specific (kind of lacking appropriate lines). So imagine my squeal of joy when I drive into lights everywhere yesterday. I did running man when I got into my apartment.
And it turns out I did have internet yesterday but my dumb ass forgot that I'd unplugged my router so I could plug in a landline phone. I only have the one working jack and the splitter I have on it doesn't work properly so I just have the one port. I remembered this afternoon and had soldier boy plug it in since he was here. He still doesn't have power. After we talked about it at length yesterday before I came home that he was so going to get power back before me because at least he didn't have the lines to his house down. >.<
The majority of the state is still down, and most are anticipating coming back online Sunday. The cell towers are screwy because they're still generator-run so my signal gets a little funky sometimes. We have a hell of a lot of out of state crews coming in. I saw someone from Norman, Oklahoma working on a street near me. That's pretty awesome.
It's not so bad right now. At least this didn't happen in January when it's 20 during the day. Since the storm it's been sunny and in the 50s so the working conditions have been ideal for the crews. But apparently you still get people that lose their minds and think they're never going to get heat back so they do brilliant things like bring their generators inside or use those charcoal grills in their kitchens. Seriously, the number of carbon monoxide deaths has skyrocketed because of these things. Natural selection at its best, I say. It's nice to know that I won't completely lose my head in the first few days of the apocalypse like some people. A polar sleeping bag and extra blankets are totally overrated, apparently. Worked fine for me.
So forgive my discombobulation right now. I'm a bit behind, to say the least. I have books and goodies to mail out and I had to pull another winner for the Halloween Horror Giveaway. She's already been emailed. Like I said above, I have a pretty big backlog of reviews to post since, well, what the hell else am I going to go when nothing's open (literally), I couldn't really drive anywhere and I had no power? Halloween was literally cancelled in my town (and in many others, apparently children walking into down power lines in the pitch dark isn't optimal) and I feel I've totally missed it. Like I woke up and it was Christmas already. Ick.
So give me a couple days to rebobulate and I should be good to go. Thanks for hanging in there with me.
