Monday, July 26, 2010

Powerless

Blessings, Darlings!

It's been bloody hot here lately - massive heat wave, more days over 90 degrees so far this summer than we usually get ALL summer, many days over 100 degrees.

What happens at the end of a heat wave? MASSIVE THUNDER STORMS.  Which came thru' yesterday afternoon.  At 3 pm the temperature had been 99 or 100 degrees.  At 4 pm the temperature was lower, but humidity was 100 percent, there was thunder, pouring rain, and we had no power.  For that matter, 400,000 of our closest friends and neighbors had no power, either.

We being, well, into books, we just broke out the reading we were behind on and sat on couches by windows and read.  Then napped.  Three hours into the blackout I broke out the radio and found out just how widespread the problem was.  Not as bad as when Hurricane Isabel came thru', but the worst we've had since then.  Lots of roads closed from downed trees, and the trees took down power lines.

Oh, and since power was out at one of the water stations .... again with the water restrictions.  Not that anyone was going to water their yards after the rain, or was going to run their dish or clothes washers with no power, eh?  

Since we are Prepared For Most Things, I did the cooking part of dinner outside (steamed chicken for 10 minutes, cooked bean thread in same water for 5 seconds).  I moved the 1.5 liter bottle of iced tea from the big freezer to the  fridge. I did go to the town north of us (where power lines are all buried!) and get a little dry ice just in case we ended up late on the repair list - BGE officials weren't ruling out repairs taking several days.

We got lucky - power was back here at 11:30 pm. Fans!  Air conditioning! Most important:  we could work today, and that's apparently tied in to paying our bills.  And I could can the cherries today that I'd bought but NOT canned when it was 100 dang degrees out. 

How's summer treating you?



Frondly, Fern

2 comments:

  1. We've had a not so nice summer this year. We get one or two nice and warm days, the rest are cold and rainy. Summer arrived a month late, so I couldn't plant outside until mid July because of frost.

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  2. It's hot here as well, we had an early week and things went back to normal. Now it's August which means hot once again.
    Still getting fresh vegetables from mom, although eggs are far more plentiful.
    Hope it cools off soon for you. ~MJ

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