Hello, everyone! It’s so good to be talking with you all again. I had an unexpected blog hiatus when the snow storm from hell hit on Saturday and took my power out for five days. And, since it was a COLD five days, I was more concerned with getting under enough blankets than finding an Internet connection.
But every cloud has a silver lining, and I have turned my recent Arctic adventure into a blog post. So here you go – 12 ways you can tell the electricity’s been off too long when it’s cold outside.
- You sleep fully clothed, including socks, hat and mittens.
- You think six blankets aren’t quite enough.
- You judge the temperature in a room by whether or not you can see your breath.
- Upon rising, the first thing you do is put on your coat.
- You are giddy with excitement about your new head light – a flashlight that straps to your head (it really is awesome).
- You try to encourage cats to sit on you so you can steal some of their body heat
- You get tears in your eyes at the sight of a warm cup of coffee.
- You’re disappointed when the office is closed for power outages because you were counting on going in to work.
- You take your cell phone, iPod and Kindle out for a ride in the car to charge them and strategically plan which one gets the outlet for which part of the drive.
- You think cold Dinty Moore beef stew right out of the can doesn’t sound all that bad.
- The condensation on the windows of your house is because of the temperature INSIDE.
- You go insane and purchase 20 additional pairs of socks.
After 5 days of temperatures in the 40’s during the day and high 20’s, low 30’s at night, the power came back on at the Palatial Horvath Estate yesterday evening. Today it was 60 degrees outside. Ah, irony. How I love thee. And how I love me some electricity.
Happy Belated Halloween!
6) You try to encourage cats to sit on you so you can steal some of their body heat
You have found my secret to keeping the cost down in the winter LOL
WOW 5 days is a long time! Longest I have gone is like 3 days ( well when not camping in the wilds!) and thankfully we had a wood stove. Glad you survived toes in tack well hopefully none fell off from the cold.
@Doris: I’m just glad this whole thing didn’t happen in January, or it would really have been a problem. There are still some people in the area without electricity, so I feel lucky. It was such a bad storm because all of the trees still had leaves and the snow was wet and heavy so they couldn’t handle the weight. And now I begin looking into alternative heating solutions! (besides cats – LOL)
Hilarious but all true as I recall from childhood in rural upstate NY. I like
#9 re charging the essential appliances of life! Be warm….
@Veronica Scott: You know, figuring out how to charge all of my personal electronics was actually pretty interesting. And that’s not even counting the laptop, the netbook, the WIFI hotspot… even my 82 year old mother has a cell phone that needed charging. LOL 😀
After hearing what other people went through I am thinking that my 3+ hours without power just wasn’t too bad. Thanks for the positive outlook!
@Nancy: You DID luck out! There are people up around Allentown who still don’t have power. The amount of damage to the trees is just awesome. But I’m glad you made it through okay!