Monday, December 18, 2006

Powerless in Seattle

Just to let you folks know, we are still without power at our house, and at my work. We're part of the unfortunate final 200,000 without power. All around us, power is coming back on, but we may be another day or two, due to downed trees.

We got by without any damage from trees or wind, but it got cold in a hurry. With both fireplaces going, we were keeping it about 50 degrees in the house, which was okay for two days, but was no longer fun. Fortunately, one of our friends in the ward got power back Saturday night, so they brought us their generator, and we were able to get the furnace, refrigerator, and a few lights up. We have been cooking on our gas grill outside, which has a side burner, but we also baked a cake, and roasted a turkey yesterday. That has been nice.

Some of the problems we ran into included with the power outages, most of the few stores that were open, could not process debits or credit card transactions, so we had to get some cash. In the future, we are going to keep a little on hand. Gas was also in short supply, as with out power, the stations couldn't pump gas. There were two hour waits on Friday, and almost that long on Saturday. Church meetings for our entire stake were cancelled yesterday to save on gas, and keep people off the roads, as there are still many trees down. I had to detour drastically to get to work today, where we are running some computers off of a generator, but no heat, and no lights. It is probably 35 degrees in here as I type this.

We bought some hand crank radios and shaker flashlights (ie, no batteries to run down), and those have also been lifesavers. We went through half our firewood supply in the first 48 hours. Until we got the generator, we were probably 24 hours from having to seek shelter somewhere else.

But, we are all okay, no damage, just about three days behind on our final Christmas shopping, so we hope to get caught up today. Take care,

Kevin & Katie & family
- Pardon the spelling if I missed anything, my fingers are almost numb while I type this at work.

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