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Greetings gang - Thank you for sending a couple of PMs asking about the last week or so. On Thursday the 11th we had a bit of an Ice Storm that did a royal number on the electric power distribution system in New England. When I went out on Friday morning the local road was nearly blocked with downed branches and debris. Our local mid voltage distribution line had one 11,000 volt wire on the ground. This wire stayed on the ground for the next 6 days. Unfortunately this connection fed the underground wiring for our half of the condo.
We eventually ran out of water and I had to bail water out of the local pond to provide sanitation. All I could think of was a simple loss of power sets civilization back to ancient Egypt and a bucket on a rope. We slept at home during the event. Even thought the inside temperature dropped to 39 deg one morning in the living room we did not risk freezing the plumbing. The place is insulated well enough that a two mantel Coleman propane lamp actually brought the temperature up a bit. Finding a Colman propane bottle on Saturday morning was impossible.
The Town set up a Red Cross shelter in the school gym. We did not use the shelter except for showers. If the kids that generally use these showers have to put up with, OK now I am griping, barely warm water then we have one tough bunch of kids. The shelter was quite full with mostly elderly and more than a few families. At least the place was warm because they have a big enough stand by generator to handle the lighting and furnace loads using natural gas as the fuel.
Eventually the power was restored about 2 AM on Wednesday morning the 17th. Anne was scheduled for surgery that afternoon in Boston. She was in the hospital until Friday morning. I brought her home before the weekend snow part 1. We spent the weekend at home with interesting things like heat, water, light and TV.
I am going to be on vacation until January 5th. I will try to continue our correspondence during that time. Thank all of you for your concern and have a happy holidays and a good year.
hey greg! welcome back to the land of electricity! I'm with you on the pond water. I went through the same thing, although we got our power back last Wednesday so we were only a week without power. I can't say the same for friends in Derry. They were told January would be the earliest.
and I think my DH is nuts for hoarding water: One time I ventured down into the basement and found at least 60 gallon jugs of water down there (mostly from either the dehumidifier or decanting at the sink waiting for it to get hot)! His excuse was that if the power ever went out, we'd be all set for flushing. Mind you, the number of times out power has gone out for more than a few hours over a 25 year stretch of time....
I can't let him read this or he'll start hoarding when we move up!
We are instituting a new policy. We fill a couple of large buckets with tap water and keep them in the bathtub if an ice storm is forecast. Then we will have a flush warer supply next to the flusher.
why not just fill the tub? I was thinking I should have done that when the ice storm was first forecast. I should have filled both of them. Hiking to the pond and carrying two full buckets through knee deep snow is not my idea of fun.
Greg - Glad to hear you are back among the land of modern conveniences! It sounds like you made the best of a bad situation Here's to a quick postop recovery for Anne and a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to both of you!
Good to see you made it back, Greg. Having no water pressure isn't fun at all. I had to haul a few buckets myself.
The bathtub idea is good until, as you say, that leaky stop will dry you up by morning. There are a couple of other locations however. Your hot water tank, if you have one, usually contains 40 gallons. Just make sure power or fuel is shut off and don't relight or re-power until the tank is refilled FULLY with water and all air has been evacuated from the lines and the water runs full blast.
Another location is your washing machine. If you expect to have a power outage, fill your washing machine ahead of time. If you survive the storm, simply add detergent and do a cold load before pumping it out. But lets hope your power stays on for the rest of the winter.
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. Mind you, the number of times out power has gone out for more than a few hours over a 25 year stretch of time.... 
Here's to a quick postop recovery for Anne and a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to both of you!
