Winter Sucks, But at Least I Had Heat

[Elspode]

So...Selene decides its time to start putting up Yule decorations, so we invite my son over (from his place all the way over on the other side of the driveway), start a fire in the fireplace for the first time, put on some hot cider, and have the boys start bringing down the hundreds of storage bins full of Yule decor. After an appropriate time with Selene putting out a portion of her enormous angel collection, we decide to go watch "White Christmas" on the new TV. Seems right, as we were in the process of accumulating six inches of snow over the ice that came down the day before.

We get to the last 90 seconds of the film, the big, colorful, beautiful holiday tableaux with der Bingle, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and the incredibly scrawny and lanky Vera Ellen singing their guts out, and...poof! No power.

It was around midnight or so, and about 15 degrees outside. Moreover, we were the only ones without power...all of our neighbors had lights, streetlights were lit, businesses behind us shining brightly through the snowfall. I snagged my trusty Everready LED headlamp, snatched up my cell phone and put in a call to the "help, our power is out" automated service. I feared the worst. Although I hadn't heard about any large scale outages so far, as a single customer with power out in a fairly serious snow event, I was worried that it could be days before we got power back.

Fortunately, when the ice started on Wednesday, youngest kid went into Apocalypse mode, and brought in a substantial amount of wood from the woodpile to the garage so it could be drying out. Using the three kids and myself, we made space around the woodstove on the sun porch (also previously unused - hell, it had been 60 degrees here on Tuesday) by removing most of the unpacked boxes still languishing there and rearranging the musical gear to leave a couple of feet clearance.

We got the woodstove fired up, and it immediately started putting out an impressive amount of heat. In fact, it kept all but two bedrooms upstairs at a toasty 72 degrees all night long. This is especially impressive when you consider that we normally only run the furnace at *68 degrees*!

Power came back on at about 6:30 Central time, and not a moment too soon. The last of the decent sized stuff is now burning in both the FP and the woodstove, and I've got a hell of a bark mess all over the house now. All in all, though, I could have imagined a much worse night than the one we spent all hunkered down like the old days.

Blessings are where you find them. I'm blessed with a pretty cool family and a pretty cool house with a pretty hot stove.

[Shawnee123]

Originally Posted by Elspode

Blessings are where you find them. I'm blessed with a pretty cool family and a pretty cool house with a pretty hot stove.

You said it, Elspode!

[Griff]

What else could you want?

[glatt]

I knew that house was awesome.

We're watching the same storm making its way over here. It's almost 70 now, in December, in D.C., and it's supposed to drop down to the mid 30's in several hours. It's gonna be interesting. I think my leaf pile at the curb might blow around a bit. They're predicting 60 mph winds today.

[dar512]

I'm glad you stayed toasty. That'll make a nice family story to tell.

[bbro]

That reminds me of something that happened when I was younger. There was a huge snowstorm in the winter of '93 and our furnace went out (leaking carbon monoxide). Luckily, my grandfather was out of town, so me, my mom, and my two brothers camped out in his house, leaving dad behind to wait for the heater guys. Apparently, the big, metal, rusty-looking thing in the basement that scared me when I was young had a purpose. It was a wood burning furnace - unuseable when mom is in the house (asthma), but apparently still worked. Don't know where he got the wood, though. He told us that when the heater guys walked in the house with their seven layers of closed, they started stripping and said "I thought the heater was broken!!" I think I want one of those things built into my house when I buy one.

Good on ya', Fleas native dad!

[Griff]

When I was a kid we had a severe winter storm that knocked out power for like 3 or 4 days. We had a coal furnace and a wood-gas stove so a whole bunch of the neighbors camped in our house. Great fun for us kids!

[glatt]

That's a nice thing about my old house with the original furnace. It only uses electricity to run the thermostat and open a valve to let natural gas in. The hot water circulates by convection to the radiators. If the power goes out for a while, I can hook it up to a car battery and have central heat for days with thermostatic control. The natural gas keeps coming when the power is out.

[barefoot serpent]

at least you didn't have to start breaking up the furniture!

[Elspode]

I'm now in the process of trying to find someone to deliver a truckload of wood to me. Too much snow to muck about trying to go cut it off of my friend's property right now, and it worked out so well that I'm by God going to use the damn woodstove at night. Especially when it is down to 8 degrees...egad.

Snow and 8 degrees are myths use to scare real people into not crossing the Mason Dixon... nice try.

[limey]

Power cuts are a fact of life on this island, especially when it's blowy (like, er, now ).
When I moved here I made sure I had a calor gas camping stove and lamp for emergencies, plus I have now had a coal stove and fireplace put in. We always have piles of candles (Best Beloved and I grew up through the "Winter of Discontent" in Britain).
Have just had conversation with a neighbour about logs ... hope to get some soon.
The stove is a 100-year-old character piece and I am advised to only use simple coal in it, as other more modern fuels might cause meltdown !

[melidasaur]

I bought a new car in September... all is well with the car, except I don't have an ice scraper. I needed one yesterday after work, but instead sat in the car for 30 minutes until the ice was gone and I could drive home.

This morning, my locks were frozen.

Thus on my shopping list - ice scraper and lock de-icer (does it work?).

[glatt]

Reminds me of when my wife and I were just starting out. We don't get a lot of snow in DC, and the snow we do get usually melts in a day or two. So when we were newlyweds and living in an apartment together, we never bothered to buy a snow shovel. We would park the car on the street for days at a time and take public transportation everywhere.

Well, we had a freak snowstorm that dropped about 2-3 feet of snow in a day or two. In the apartment complex, nobody had snow shovels to dig their cars out. You can't sweep away 3 feet of snow with a broom. We ended up using a cookie sheet and a broiler pan to dig ourselves out. Then we decided that even though we dug ourselves out, we couldn't drive anywhere, because we would lose our spot, and we'd have to dig out a new parking place upon our return. So we stayed home.

Man, that place sucked. I'm glad to have a driveway.