We love you, electricity! Never abandon us again!

[annathepiper]

So there we were last night around a quarter to eight or so, thinking we had made it past the storm, when BOOM, the house went completely dark. We broke out candles and flashlights and turned on the fireplace in the main living room--which, amazingly, still worked. We weren't entirely sure how the switch on that thing still functioned, but clearly it does even in the absence of power!

solarbird took our servers down, and tempting though it was to keep it running, I shut my laptop off as well since I didn't want to use its battery power unless I absolutely had to. It was really too dark to read or write, too, so that left us with one other option: MUSIC! spazzkat and I snatched up our guitars and his drum kit. Dara got out her flutes. And we had ourselves an impromptu little jam session. It was fun. There WILL be a Jam Report. ;)

We also ordered pizza as per usual on Saturday night, though I made sure first that the nearest Pagliacci's still had power. I asked the call center guy to please also be sure to warn our driver that we had no power and to be careful coming up the steps.

A few blocks over from our house we could see lights. I said to the others, "Those people over there live in a bright land. A shiny land. A land with POWER!" Paul said, "We should hit them with our rocks and steal their fire."

The cat and the parrot, it must be noted, were extremely confused as to why we were all wandering around in the dark.

Paul eventually got his futon from downstairs (since it gets really chilly in his section of the house if the heat is off) and tugged it up to our room where the other fireplace was, and went to bed. Dara and risu and I held out a while longer, as Dara hooked a light up to the UPS in the server closet to let Jenna have some light if she wanted it. Dara also got me a flashlight so I could try to write a little--longhand, even. And I did wind up writing 300-some-odd words for Chapter 20 of Lament.

But at last I got sleepy too, so I prepared to go to bed.

And round about 11:30 or so, about a minute after I'd actually lain down, the air filter started up and the clock beside our bed started blinking. Electricity had returned to our benighted land, and there was much rejoicing.

Mmm. Sweet sweet electricity!

Comments

[kathrynt.livejournal.com]

Man, we must have been the ONLY house to maintain power. There's a switch.

[solarbird]

solarbird took our servers down, and tempting though it was to keep it running
For what, the 20 minutes remaining battery power? Not really.

[annathepiper]

Mmm! Pronoun trouble!

[solarbird]

I demand that you shoot me now!

[annathepiper]

The wacky part was that we held out through the windy parts of the day, mostly, aside from the ten minute outage in the morning. But we think that what happened was that the utility pole Dara saw wobbling back and forth actually got unstable, so they had to take it down and shut our circuit off while they fixed it.

[annathepiper]

*BLAM!*

[solarbird]

 

[solarbird]

I. HATE. you.

[starfallz.livejournal.com]

*giggles*

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

After stocking up on flashlights, candles, and various other implements of emergency lighting, we got NOTHING - power stayed on all day, as far as we can tell from the non-blinking clocks. Eh, we'll be prepared for the next one.

We have THOUSANDS of little piney branches all over our deck, and a couple of big ones further back away from the house. :-)

[firni.livejournal.com]

I went out with warcow and tonydasquid to photograph properties they were considering for purchase.

From here in SnoHOmish all the way up to Arlington, and points in-between, there were snapped trees and signs that the PUD had been through recently with their nifty chainsaws and wood-chippers. We only saw their trucks once, near Lake Stevens... they'd already finished their choppy-choppy and were on the way to the next job. They must have been on alert all night. Lots of branches all over the place. We have massive amounts of branches in the yard but amazingly, our power only flickered once, and that was Friday night. No trees came down up here in Treeville! For that, I am shocked (but pleased).

Apparently people who thought they were gonna miss out on the StupidBowl made a run on generators at various outlets.

[annathepiper]

Glad to hear you didn't have any trees falling over! I saw in the storm article up on seattletimes.com that at least one house got slammed by a falling tree.

I was honestly stunned that our power came back around 11:30 last night. I was fully expecting we'd be out until this morning.

[annathepiper]

Glad to hear your power remained stable! And better to be too prepared than not prepared enough. :)

I could see some storm debris down on 57th from our bedroom window. And I'm sure we'll find more when I venture out in a little while to go down to the shops in Lake Forest Park.

[annathepiper]

Having heard that many people in areas outside Seattle may be out of luck in regards to the Super Bowl today since they don't have their power back yet, Paul remarked to me this morning that we should prepare in case they try to hit us with THEIR rocks and steal OUR fire.

I told him we'd have to fortify against the coming of the FOOTBALL ZOMBIES!

[starfallz.livejournal.com]

Don't worry! They can't work doorknobs. As long as you have doorknobs, you'll be safe!! :D

[annathepiper]

Yeah, but these are ZOMBIES we're talking about. They just WALK RIGHT THROUGH big glass doors!