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we were awakened just after 5:30 this morning by my fan turning off due to the fabulously rainy and windy weather going on outside (which did not deter the dog any).
now, i used to think my parents had a lot of power outages because the wires are all tangled up with tree branches, and every time a branch fell, it would take a wire with it. here the lines are underground, but i swear we have more outages than i can count.
and we live in a flood plain, land of sinking homes, so no electricity means no sump pump, which can potentially mean wet basement. so first order of business was to make sure all of my brother's stuff on the basement floor (since he dropped out of college), was not able to get wet. crates are good for stacking.
also, we have Vonage phone service. which means, no electricity, no modem, no phone. i have it set up so that if service is out, calls are automatically forwarded to my cell phone. except that i turned on the phone and realized it only had one bar of battery. couldn't charge it, of course. and even if i wanted to charge it briefly in the car, john has my car today while his is getting an oil change and tire rotation.
so i went back to bed and turned off the cell phone to conserve battery while john worked on his statistics homework before work. good thing i turned it off. there was a message from john's mom telling us what our weather is like. she watches the Weather Channel obsessively and likes to let everyone know when it's stormy where they live. in case we didn't happen to look out the window, i guess. john got her to stop doing that early in the morning, so this was a rare occasion.
i'm also fielding calls from various car insurance agencies because my brother got into a minor car accident yesterday, but his insurance company says not to talk to the other person's insurance company so i'm just not answering those calls anymore. and a few other random calls that i swear i never usually get. it's like the world knew my battery was about to die.
also, the house has a hardwired alarm system. we don't subscribe to any kind of service (why bother - it's the safest town in america), but it still beeps quickly everytime windows and doors are opened and closed and if it senses glass breaking (or dishes clanging when we put them away, etc.). i don't mind that at all, but it also beeps EVERY TEN SECONDS when it finds that the phone lines are not working. gah!
so i tried to workout without benefit of someone telling me what to do and took a candlelit shower. and after five hours, the power came back on.
i love my electricity, but i really love my DVR. when the power came back on, i didn't turn the cable boxes on right away. we figured it would save the stuff that's been taped and our scheduled recordings on its hard drive, but what i was most pleased about was that without me turning it back on, it went ahead and recorded Total Body Sculpt with Gilad for me anyway. ah, technology.
now, i used to think my parents had a lot of power outages because the wires are all tangled up with tree branches, and every time a branch fell, it would take a wire with it. here the lines are underground, but i swear we have more outages than i can count.
and we live in a flood plain, land of sinking homes, so no electricity means no sump pump, which can potentially mean wet basement. so first order of business was to make sure all of my brother's stuff on the basement floor (since he dropped out of college), was not able to get wet. crates are good for stacking.
also, we have Vonage phone service. which means, no electricity, no modem, no phone. i have it set up so that if service is out, calls are automatically forwarded to my cell phone. except that i turned on the phone and realized it only had one bar of battery. couldn't charge it, of course. and even if i wanted to charge it briefly in the car, john has my car today while his is getting an oil change and tire rotation.
so i went back to bed and turned off the cell phone to conserve battery while john worked on his statistics homework before work. good thing i turned it off. there was a message from john's mom telling us what our weather is like. she watches the Weather Channel obsessively and likes to let everyone know when it's stormy where they live. in case we didn't happen to look out the window, i guess. john got her to stop doing that early in the morning, so this was a rare occasion.
i'm also fielding calls from various car insurance agencies because my brother got into a minor car accident yesterday, but his insurance company says not to talk to the other person's insurance company so i'm just not answering those calls anymore. and a few other random calls that i swear i never usually get. it's like the world knew my battery was about to die.
also, the house has a hardwired alarm system. we don't subscribe to any kind of service (why bother - it's the safest town in america), but it still beeps quickly everytime windows and doors are opened and closed and if it senses glass breaking (or dishes clanging when we put them away, etc.). i don't mind that at all, but it also beeps EVERY TEN SECONDS when it finds that the phone lines are not working. gah!
so i tried to workout without benefit of someone telling me what to do and took a candlelit shower. and after five hours, the power came back on.
i love my electricity, but i really love my DVR. when the power came back on, i didn't turn the cable boxes on right away. we figured it would save the stuff that's been taped and our scheduled recordings on its hard drive, but what i was most pleased about was that without me turning it back on, it went ahead and recorded Total Body Sculpt with Gilad for me anyway. ah, technology.
