Nemo 2013

Had to post about our experiences during the Blizzard of the century. The storm started on Friday late afternoon. Shara had school cancelled in preparation for the storm so she came with me to the Southeastern Library Legislative Day at the Lakeville Library. She was great, sat and ate her bagel while people talked about funding libraries. It was a fantastic turnout, impending storm or not and Shara colored and was fine keeping herself busy. She came back to work with me for what I thought would be just an hour or so, but we ended up staying until the office closed (early because of the storm), and we went home in some light snow. Nothing too interesting yet.

Alan came home shortly after us and we had some lunch and got ready for the storm to strike. And it did, though it took until Saturday for us to see what happened. The lights kept dimming through the night but at about 11:30 PM something major happened, which is when I shut off the laptop and went to bed. I heard a big rumble, thought it was the snow coming off the roof, and the lights blinked, the UPS's all went off and the house was generally noisy with alarms ringing. Alan and I tracked down what was complaining and then went to bed. At about 4 AM Alan comes into the bedroom, where Shara was sleeping with us, saying, "where's a flashlight? Don't touch anything electric" and I have a heart attack while trying to help him hunt down a smell, after he assures me there isn't an electrical fire somewhere. Not finding anything, I had to then go back to bed because the adrenaline rush left me sort of woozy. Shara slept through it all.

After the real start to the day for me, after Alan made coffee - we had the gas stove but limited electricity at this point. Turns out a tree fell into our yard, ripping the power lines from our house. Here's a picture of Alan snow-blowing - at the edge of the driveway you may be able to see the wires coming out of the snow.

We only had about 18" at our place but the drifts were pretty tall. Here's a picture of our back deck. It was very beautiful.

This tree lost a big-ish branch but that was the only damage to our trees. We did lose Shara's computer and 2 UPS's, and something bad is up with the furnace. We're not completely sure. Alan's going to rig something up to switch some currents? I'm not really sure. This is the type of detail that it's better I don't hear or I'll get nervous. Bottom line is the gas company needs to come out and get it fixed so we can have heat in the main part of the house. Shara's been sleeping with us because our bedroom has been the warmest.

The first night, Friday, we tried to get warm with the fireplace. That wasn't very effective since the wood wasn't the warmest. We did have a fun evening. I made corn bread and chowder and we ate dinner in the bedroom with the fire. Had we known we'd be living there, we may have wanted to move elsewhere. But it was pretty good and mostly a normal evening. Saturday we woke to the beauty of the snow and sun. We all went outside to shovel and build a fort. Mostly that was Shara and Alan while I cleared off the front stairs and then the deck. I did make my way into the fort and managed to destroy the stairs ala Godzilla. Shara really liked being in the fort and wanted to have the seats be really big so many people could sit in there at once. Alan has the pictures of the fort. After the fort, they went sledding down the mound. That lasted for one run - Shara went face first down the hill, losing her glasses and getting a face full of snow. She was done. Too bad it was her first trip down the hill. But then we went inside and had lunch and relaxed. It was clear Shara wasn't use to the lack of TV. We had just enough power to run our charges, the waterbed (good thing!), the refrigerator, and the heat in the main house (until something sizzled and then we couldn't do that).The first sizzle we tried to track down turned out to be Shara's computer. We'd hear some buzzing and then go run around the house trying to find where it was coming from. The last one was to the furnace. Once that was fully off, it was clear that we couldn't really run anything bigger than a charger. But that was a life-saver. At least we could stay in communication with people and see what was going on in the real world.

We also played Uno and Old Maid - who knew that was a fun game? I remember playing with Nanny but playing with more than two people is much more fun. Here is Brutus wanting to be dealt in.

The evening found us back in the bedroom, trying to huddle together in bed for warmth. It basically worked - we had about 6 blankets, 2 being down comforters. The hardest was the lack of hot water but thankfully Bill, our next door neighbor, offered us his generator and that let us take hot showers on Sunday. Shara and I went to the South Shore plaza, where they too lost power while we were there. But it was still fun and we got some exercise walking the mall and window shopping. The food court was open so we were able to eat lunch. We left and went to Daddy's Dairy for dessert.

Sunday evening we assumed Shara would have school on Monday, but she didn't. She went to Tina's and enjoyed staying inside watching tv for much of the day. We were all happy on Tuesday when power and FIOS was fixed by the evening.