Powerless

Our power is finally back on after 76 hours without electricity. It feels good to be sitting at home in the light at my computer, typing on a full-sized keyboard instead of a tiny little touch screen. The refrigerator is humming along, the water is running, my phones are working, and I don't have to worry about the state of batteries in the flashlights, for the time being.

Although it was inconvenient, and a bit expensive (although the food in the refrigerator survived because of both the quality of the appliance and the foresight we showed in placing frozen gallon bottles of water inside), we got off easy. To the north, roads in the White Mountains were completely washed out, as was the railroad bridge that connects Conway to Crawford Notch. We just got a lot of rain and wind, and trees hitting our power lines in various places.

We didn't even get much leaking, something I was expecting more of. And knowing that the storm was coming, we filled a bathtub and a trash can with water so that we could flush the toilets and brush our teeth. And we charged all of the electronics so that we could entertain the kids after dark and use our cell phones to reach the outside world. Karen found some wonderful glow sticks that last about 12 hours and give off an amazing amount of light. We hung one in front of the bathroom and one in our stairwell.

Of course, we weren't expecting the power outage to last three days, but we managed to charge the phones while we were driving so that they had enough juice to get us by.

Karen's birthday came right in the middle of the whole mess, but we made quite a day of it, traveling to North Conway to poke around the many fun shops there, and then picking up Thomas for dinner at The Lobster Trap, our favorite restaurant in that area, and one that Karen has been visiting since she was about 12.

Every night we were a little less enthusiastic, the water in the bathtub shallower, the glow sticks and the battery-powered night lights a little dimmer. But we stuck it out and now everything is back to its normal state of insanity.

A little side note: we have been gradually making changes to save ourselves some money. One of these involves the phone. Now that we are able to use our cell phones at home, we are eliminating our land line, and so giving up our Wolfeboro-exchange number of the last 14 years. Those of you who have our cell numbers can continue to use them (we've ported them to a new carrier). Those that need the number can email me at gordon at thebrooksbunch.com (spelled out to cut down on my already overwhelming volume of unsolicited messages).

I'll let you know how that works out.