We lost power around 5:30 pm. on Monday, September 1, 2008, while I was cooking supper. So far it the storm had not been so bad for us though we were still watching weather channel and heard that it had hit land that morning. We were informed that the storm was not yet over and to expect spin off storms from the eye of the storm as it past through. Up to this point, we were just hanging out watching movies. We checked out extra movies Sunday afternoon (when we were getting some Disney classics to watch with Natalie) expecting to at least loose satellite signals (which often happens on extremely cloudy days even w/o rain storms), but we did not lose signals until we lost electricity.We don't have the time to watch movies like we used to...so we found several we had not seen that weren't 2 day rentals. We felt like big slobs all day Labor Day...sitting around eating, watching movies and just being a little lazy. Little did we know of the No Power days that we had ahead of us. No Power does create family bonding like paying scrabble. As you can see from this game board, we're really not that great at this. And as you could see in the first image, even though we aren't that good...we're always competitive (Did you notice the pink paper for keeping score?)
This is the battery-operated radio. This was our link to the outside world when we had no other source available.
I will add the link to the rest of this story later. I will give the story on Natalie's World. It is cute little story about her and this baby doll. I will name it in case I forget to and you need to search for titles on Natalie's World: "Did you say Sally?" (I random inserted it here because it was photographed in this group of images.)
EDITED TO ADD THE LINK: http://lalalanataliesworld.blogspot.com/2008/09/did-you-say-sally.html
Notice the Pringle potato chip Cari is holding. We laugh because all we wanted to do was eat even before we lost power. We were afraid we would all the food before anything happened, but we didn't. We did fine on food. It was the air conditioning that the hardest to live without....
especially because this was the only real loss that we suffered. Randy has this welding generator at the gin. He kept thinking nothing was really going to happen especially after it land and nothing major had happened yet. I kept telling him beware we are still in harm's way...at least that's what I kept hearing on the radio and even on the Weather Channel. I guess he wasn't listening that close to all the other mumbo jumbo on the storm info. But, just in case, he did go get this from the gin. After the power went out, he hooked up up to the refrigerator. It quit soon after that. It was storming really bad about this time. This is when I think a lot of the tornadoes were going through (about the time we were playing scrabble). So that night we slept w/o A/C and w/o any other amenities that we are so accustomed to.
So first thing Randy took care of it all. He got gas for our generator and helped a friend get his convenience store up and running with generators so that people could get gas. So for the next few days, we had SOME power....just no A/C and no plasma tv (imagine life w/o that!).
(The reason this photograph look so unclear is because it was photographed by my bedroom window while it was raining.)
So what does a family to do after doing all you can with the situation that you are in?
So as the rain continued Tuesday, September 2, 2008, we piled up in Mom and Dad's room and watched movies. Since my room isn't set up for TV viewing and I had already claimed my bed and pillow, Cari claimed Natalie's since she wasn't here!
Another view of the generator that kept us going the last few days, if notice the window is opened above it. Most of our windows do not even have screens on them. We just go from air to heat all year long...which ever one we need and sometimes it is air in the winter (oh, Life in the South!) I photographed this yesterday while playing outside with Natalie for a little while. It was still doing it's job at this time. Cari and I early chose to start clean up efforts on the porch and steps because it was so hot inside. It was acutally like a fall day outside yesterday and I it has been today too because of the wind blowing. We even decided to go to the new Fred's in town to get a new broom and a few things just so that we could go into an air conditioned building. We even got cold in there. Their air was working very well.
The guys from the power company finally showed up last night (09.04.08) to get it up and back working. Randy and his guys had spent some time earlier during the day working on getting the lines off the ground (since they were already dead...I guess all of his gin training he has learned to do a lot electrical things like this ). So by the time I started cooking supper in the warm kitchen (it was so much cooler outside), we had given up on the coming until today. And wouldn't you guess, as I was about 15 minutes away from finishing it up and getting it ready for the table...they come to our resue! So the rest of supper was cooked in the dark...the stove is gas! Candles just don't do a great job of lighting the kitchen. And yes, we used candles. By this time we couldn't put our finger on a flashlight because we had a lights (just not A/C).
As bad as it all was w/o power, our worst night was the first one w/o NO POWER. The next few nights we had ceiling fans...not the same as air conditioning, but much better than no air moving at all. Some have had it much worst. So I won't complain. I do thank God for sparing us and so many this time around.
~~ja~~
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