What the Folk!

Complaining. I know it totally sucks but she has options. I've told her she can stay at my place but she grumbled. Or she can stay at my grandma & aunt's place to which she grumbled "I'd rather stare at a wall in my cold house." Well, okay then. It's been about 48 degrees in her house. She's been sleeping in her coat and boots in a chair in the front room coz she's afraid more trees are going to fall in the back where her bedroom is. She's also convinced that she can't leave the house for any period of time coz the pipes may freeze. No amount of logical conversation on these topics seems to sway her (I doubt more trees will fall now that there is no wind or snow & it's nowhere near cold enough for pipes to freeze).

Here at home now most of the snow has melted & I just packed my snow boots away. I'd better not need them again for at least a few months.

That's not healthy for her to hang out in a house that cold. If her power's still off tomorrow, you need to get her some warmth. Does she have a car she can go out and heat up? Strike that - does she have a car that she can drive over to your house?

She has a car and she's spending the day at my aunt's today and coming to my place for dinner but she refuses to sleep overnight at my house or my aunt's and all the hotels are booked. The majority of towns around here are not expected to be up & running until Friday. Local business that have power are advertising heavily and saying things like - free wi fi and come charge your cell phone. My mom's town is in complete darkness and there has been no work done yet on getting traffic lights working or even clearing large fallen trees from main roads. It's worse than the aftermath of Irene because the temps were warm then and it stayed light until 8pm.

I gotta tell you, this is my worst nightmare.
I was at my dermatologist's today and he said the same thing, about it being much colder and darker now.
He mentioned the conditions in Jersey. Holy cow, during Irene it took forever to get the lights back on in my old town, and the abundance of downed trees were blocking the side roads for days. But for you to have main roads blocked - eek!
Hey, this is a way to jumpstart the economy - everyone with a saw, line up over here...payment is per tree, once it's cleared off the road.

It's kind of cool how everyone's bonding over this. My mom's been hanging out at the library with other outage people and they are becoming fast friends. A bunch of them have been meeting the diner for meals too. I found my mom a hotel room close to my apartment so she'll be staying there tonight at least.

That's good to hear, SW. Glad your Mom will be warm tonight.
The one day we lost power during Irene, I noticed the building's residents came together in the one room that had power and made soup. Others brought salad, etc, and we all had a great time getting to know each other and laughing a lot.I can see that meeting up with others with no power could lead to friendships. This all makes me so nervous about having the same thing happen in the dead of winter. Ooh, maybe I shouldn't have said that and given Winter any ideas.

Well maybe now is a good time to buy a generator Nancy. I learned that my heat and hot water are not electric. Neither is my stove or oven so those are all good things. If you run everything on electric you are royally screwed when mother nature decides to kick ass.

The mamala returned home from the hotel today to find that she has electricity. It sounds like it came on in the night and her house was already warm when she arrived. Thank goodness. They are projecting that all local electric should be restored by midnight tonight. There are orange electric trucks from Maryland everywhere, I think they are called Aspulth or something. Anyway, they aren't our local guys but it's good to see help trucked in from elsewhere.

Yeah, if I had a house, a generator would be a good investment. but since I'm in an apartment, I'd have no place to store it when it's not in use. Plus they keep warning people of the dangers of operating one inside.

SW, I'm glad to hear things are returning to normal and that your Mom was able to go home to a toasty house. Everyone around here just keeps saying how lucky we were, and they worry about the damage to come this winter. Irene and all the rain left the trees that are very tall and old all weakened, and any ice storm or heavy snowstorm could wreak havoc on the already weak trees. All we can do now is cross our fingers. Okay, just a little pretty, fluffy stuff around Christmas, and that's it.

I heard Denver got hit again - how are things, Faith?

Yup my cousin got hit again. It's par for the course in Colorado though, even this early.

I hadn't thought about the weakened condition of the trees. They are predicting the first half of the winter season to be pretty bad for us & then a mild second half. I'd like to skip to that mild half right now.

Wow...glad your Mom's home and all is again well. For now. I hope they're wrong about the hard winter and that the trees hold up.

I think Tom's already getting depressed over winter....

We got around 14 inches on Wed. The roads were pretty bad but I still had to go to work even though quite a few school districts decided to close. But yesterday everything was pretty much back to normal. Snow is just not a big thing here. It's just something you have to deal with.

I'm going to be relying on the state plows to get me places, since most of my travel is on Rt 95.

I'm with SW - let's get to the mild second half of the season, please.