Hot Tea & Internet
Dec. 16th, 2006 03:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akirluAh, the joys of modern life in the electrified world. First thing I did once the power finally came back on was turn on the stove and start heating water for a nice big pot of hot tea. We had been without electricity for 34 hours, when it finally flicked back on at 11:00 this morning.
We were better prepared to cope with a protracted power failure than I expected. Both cell phones were charged, and our basic model land-line phone worked throughout. We have a pair of the crank-type LED flashlights, plus a big ol' Maglite, and a rather clever battery-powered camping light with a digital clock/alarm built in. Also, the tendency of IKEA to package tea lights only in gajillion-unit bags meant that we were going to run out of many other things before we ran out of candles. I discovered that not only do the dripless stearin candles smell nostalgically of Sweden, they burn cleanly all the way through the stub until nothing is left. Not what one has been led to believe of tallow -- stearin candles burn much more slowly and cleanly than the wax ones. We also had some firewood and kindling, and ended up using less than we had. (We had already mentally earmarked one rickety maple chair and an unused occasional table for sacrifice if it got to the point of burning furniture.)
I decided not to try to go to work yesterday. The radio was reporting massive disruption of bus service, and the 520 bridge being out meant that any running bus routes would be diverted to I-90 and thus ever farther from UW campus. The driving-to-work option was torpedoed by the fact that the Volvo was very low on gas, and none of the local gas stations had power to run the pumps. Around home, I felt rather Amish, sticking to the rooms that get better natural light to conserve candlepower, and listening to the portable radio only occasionally to save on batteries. We read our books, puttered around doing small chores, napped, and walked out to see if anywhere nearby had power yet. (No luck on that -- all the places that had lights on appeared to have generators running, including the fire station, the Verizon switching station, the big postal facility, and several of the largely empty high-tech firms nearby. Ironically, the most brightly lit place in the vicinity was a Christmas tree lot -- also running off a generator.) In the evening Hal lit a conservatively small fire and I grilled sausages over it, and put a couple of foil-wrapped potatoes in the embers to bake. Both came out quite well, though at vastly different times. I had plans to start some sort of freezer-salvage-stew in a dutch oven over the next fire, if it came to that.
Some time around 6:00![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fringefaan called to check up on us, since we hadn't been heard from in any of the usual places and were suspected of being without power. I was able to report that we were fine, still had firewood and batteries, and lots of warm down comforters to hunker down under for the expected high-20s chill of the night, and so we should be okay for a while. Randy then reported us as known to be okay, if without power, to the Vanguard list where a general roll call was being kept. Nice to be remembered, I tell ya. It did make me think that I really should test out phone posting to LJ now while there isn't an emergency need to know how.
We were just listening to This American Life starting up when the power unostentatiously came on again. We're working on various Lessons Learned here at Casa O'Brien. Car's tanked up now, but all the local stores are sold out of firewood and D-cells. Imagine my surprise. This may merit a trip into Seattle proper later today. Meanwhile I'm having Hal check on charcoal. And chocolate.
We should probably get a small camping stove before too long, and maybe some Sterno cans as well. Also, I plan to order one of the L.L.Bean Emergency Weather Radios. They no longer include shortwave reception, but pick up two bands of TV reception, plus a bunch of weather stations, in addition to AM/FM, and for local emergency usage, the TV audio is probably more useful anyway. I'm also thinking that the cell phone charging and emergency siren features are kinda handy, potentially. Anyway, it's a radio that can run without batteries, which is the main thing.
Oh, and as you might be guessing from this post, my computer's not dead, after all. It seems the power supply overheated but did not burn out, during that power spike. We went out to CompUSA and got a pair of cheap UPSes, and each household computer system is on its own now, so maybe they're a little better buffered against flutters and spikes in the electricity. So we get a little smarter every time something goes wrong.
We were better prepared to cope with a protracted power failure than I expected. Both cell phones were charged, and our basic model land-line phone worked throughout. We have a pair of the crank-type LED flashlights, plus a big ol' Maglite, and a rather clever battery-powered camping light with a digital clock/alarm built in. Also, the tendency of IKEA to package tea lights only in gajillion-unit bags meant that we were going to run out of many other things before we ran out of candles. I discovered that not only do the dripless stearin candles smell nostalgically of Sweden, they burn cleanly all the way through the stub until nothing is left. Not what one has been led to believe of tallow -- stearin candles burn much more slowly and cleanly than the wax ones. We also had some firewood and kindling, and ended up using less than we had. (We had already mentally earmarked one rickety maple chair and an unused occasional table for sacrifice if it got to the point of burning furniture.)
I decided not to try to go to work yesterday. The radio was reporting massive disruption of bus service, and the 520 bridge being out meant that any running bus routes would be diverted to I-90 and thus ever farther from UW campus. The driving-to-work option was torpedoed by the fact that the Volvo was very low on gas, and none of the local gas stations had power to run the pumps. Around home, I felt rather Amish, sticking to the rooms that get better natural light to conserve candlepower, and listening to the portable radio only occasionally to save on batteries. We read our books, puttered around doing small chores, napped, and walked out to see if anywhere nearby had power yet. (No luck on that -- all the places that had lights on appeared to have generators running, including the fire station, the Verizon switching station, the big postal facility, and several of the largely empty high-tech firms nearby. Ironically, the most brightly lit place in the vicinity was a Christmas tree lot -- also running off a generator.) In the evening Hal lit a conservatively small fire and I grilled sausages over it, and put a couple of foil-wrapped potatoes in the embers to bake. Both came out quite well, though at vastly different times. I had plans to start some sort of freezer-salvage-stew in a dutch oven over the next fire, if it came to that.
Some time around 6:00
fringefaan called to check up on us, since we hadn't been heard from in any of the usual places and were suspected of being without power. I was able to report that we were fine, still had firewood and batteries, and lots of warm down comforters to hunker down under for the expected high-20s chill of the night, and so we should be okay for a while. Randy then reported us as known to be okay, if without power, to the Vanguard list where a general roll call was being kept. Nice to be remembered, I tell ya. It did make me think that I really should test out phone posting to LJ now while there isn't an emergency need to know how.We were just listening to This American Life starting up when the power unostentatiously came on again. We're working on various Lessons Learned here at Casa O'Brien. Car's tanked up now, but all the local stores are sold out of firewood and D-cells. Imagine my surprise. This may merit a trip into Seattle proper later today. Meanwhile I'm having Hal check on charcoal. And chocolate.
We should probably get a small camping stove before too long, and maybe some Sterno cans as well. Also, I plan to order one of the L.L.Bean Emergency Weather Radios. They no longer include shortwave reception, but pick up two bands of TV reception, plus a bunch of weather stations, in addition to AM/FM, and for local emergency usage, the TV audio is probably more useful anyway. I'm also thinking that the cell phone charging and emergency siren features are kinda handy, potentially. Anyway, it's a radio that can run without batteries, which is the main thing.
Oh, and as you might be guessing from this post, my computer's not dead, after all. It seems the power supply overheated but did not burn out, during that power spike. We went out to CompUSA and got a pair of cheap UPSes, and each household computer system is on its own now, so maybe they're a little better buffered against flutters and spikes in the electricity. So we get a little smarter every time something goes wrong.
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Half-life of Sterno...
Date: 2006-12-16 11:28 pm (UTC)Re: Half-life of Sterno...
Date: 2006-12-16 11:43 pm (UTC)I'm also glad
Date: 2006-12-16 11:31 pm (UTC)Re: I'm also glad
Date: 2006-12-16 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-17 02:27 am (UTC)"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you were expecting to get."
no subject
Date: 2006-12-17 02:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-17 02:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-17 05:56 am (UTC)The Swedes have the camp stove problem down cold.
Shelley