What about preparing for winter did we not get, these last eight or nine months?Last year, especially during our 8-day power (/water/phone) outage in the snow, we made plenty of promises to ourselves about being better equipped when the snow and inevitable power outages occurred. Things like:
1. Making sure our tire chains fit and that we could put them on easily (yesterday, they didn't, and we couldn't)
2. Having plenty of wood cut and stacked in our woodstacking thingy (oh, there's a lot of wood around--just not cut, split and stacked where we can get to it easily)
3. Having more than one battery-powered flourescent lantern ready to use (SO easy--aargh!)
4. Having plenty of drinking water stored up (melted snow is good for everything else)
5. Having a generator that kicks in when the power goes down (well, that one lost to electrifying the shop, this year).
6. I actually did buy a few more big candles (big whoop!).
The snow is gorgeous, I think you'll agree! From Sunday afternoon through Monday morning, we accumulated about 8 or 9 inches--pretty heavy for a first storm of the winter. SO pretty! But, somehow, our technology hasn't progressed to the point of providing continuous power/phone during wind or snow. In Germany, last year, we wondered where all the cables were. Underground, of course, was the "duh!" response. Hmm. It does seem kind of logical...
So, yesterday, after about 7:30am, when we lost power, Tom thought he'd just go to a cafe to use their WiFi and outlets to work for awhile (to prepare for a critical software release). But the snow was too deep. Even for the all-wheel drive Suby. And, after lots of digging around tires, sliding sideways, digging some more, trying to put the chains on, digging some more...you get the idea. A couple of hours later, we just gave up for the day. Stuck.
The house stays in the low 50s, so we bundle up. I cut the tips off of some old glove liners to keep my hands a little warmer and put a giant candle on the table over which to warm them now and again. Feel like I'm channeling the monastery monks laboring over the manuscripts!
Today, colder and with some plowing help from a neighbor (thank you Scott--cookies are coming!), Tom was able to get out and spend the day in the Safeway Starbucks, where a guy chewed him out for talking to loudly on the phone.
NEXT time the power goes out, we'll be so ready...
