| Most of you know that we and 1000's of people around us have been out of electircal power since Saturday morning - Dec 30 at 2am. The power came back on today at 5:25p, a very welcome relief. We ran a generator to keep the freezers and put our refrigerator stuff in clothes baskets, on the garage floor. Lost very little and no treasures, so the cold game worked just fine. The weather cooperated and did not get to cold, lows of 18 - highs of 40 at best. An area of 100 miles x 100 miles had the giant ice storm that tore hell out of the electric lines. If the lines stayed up and the poles did not snap, the lines turned into 1 1/4" diameter. Over 30,000 poles snapped in our county alone. Some rural houses will be 2-3 weeks yet before they get power. Heavy metal high voltage transmission towers just crumppled under the weight of the ice. Eleven nights sleeping on the sofa so I could wake up every 2 1/2hrs to feed the fireplace, just about did me in. Our house stayed about 62 degrees upstairs and 52 down. Just fine if you like living full time in jean and a flannel shirt. Craig and Tammy got their power back in 5 days, so we had showers and laundry relief. We went there each day and brought back 20 gallons of water to drink, wash and flush with. All is fine this evening and the dishwasher and washing machine both got ran. Candy left for Denver this morning to work her week and I'll work tomorrow morning. I'll catch the train next Thursday morning to Denver, so I can drive her home, which I do every 2 weeks. What a wild ride and nobody could ever imagine this magnitude of an outage. Cliff |