Friday, January 16, 2009

Why you shouldn't invite Duke Power to your next birthday party...

Apparently today is the coldest day on record in Indiana since 1977. Yup, you read that right. 1977.

How did I celebrate? By donning a tank top, turtleneck, sweater, tights, yoga pants, wool socks and faux-fur lined slippers.

How did the puppies celebrate? By curling up on the his-and-hers matching blankets that Grandpa and Grandma gave us for Christmas. 'Him' being Nate and 'Her' being me, but Oliver and Lola seem to think they were meant just for them.


And how did Duke Power decide to celebrate this momentous day? By letting our power go out. For over two hours. The power on our street went out at 4:00, when it was -2 outside and dropping just quickly as the sun was setting. By 5:00, the house was chilly. By 5:30 the house was not only cold but also dark. By the time Nate got home at 6:15, I could barely bend my fingers.

Since we couldn't see in the dark, let alone cook, we headed out to dinner at Bob Evans. Sometime between when we left at 6:45 and when we returned at 8:00 the power finally came back on, and the house was relatively warm again.

Thankfully the outage was relatively short-lived (although it didn't feel like it while I was shivering my behind off in dark!) and I learned a valuable lesson - I need to be better prepared for weather-related outages like this. We have one flashlight in the entire house and I was surprised to find it actually working. We really need a couple of small lanterns for power outages and I need to have them readily accessible throughout the house. I also need to acquaint myself with our circuit breakers a little bit better. And I remembered that I never bought a fire extinguisher for the kitchen in case of emergency (yes, I realize that had nothing to do with the power going out, but the thought of an emergency jogged my memory). Not exactly the kind of shopping I had in mind for this weekend but clearly very necessary!

3 comments:

KT said...

A few months ago we lost power for 3 days! 3 days. Two kids, no electricity. No internet. Lost all of our food. Did I mention the no internet? And at the time, we were like you. The proud owners of one non-working flashlight.

"Cookie" said...

Didn't lose any fingers or toes in the cold did you?? Power outages was the #1 reason we installed gas logs when we built our house. We hardly ever use them but they've come in handy several times with outages.

I have to say though....as much as I hate cold weather....I'm jealous of that view you had from your office....ALL THAT SNOW!!

The weather peeps are saying we might get 1 WHOLE INCH tonight. I'm kind of excited!! :)

heene said...

Some people in NC (11,000 I think) lost power for a day or two because of a blown transformer. It just so happened that it was in the teens with a negative wind chill.

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