We stayed in a hotel one night and then with generous friends Jessamyn and Josh the next few nights. If ever your power goes out and you happen to be in the area, I highly recommend making friends with them. Meanwhile the energy company pushed its ETA to Sunday, and then Monday, and then Wednesday.

I guess what happens is that those beautiful leaves I liked are nothing but extra surface area to the inch or so of ice covering everything. A leaf itself weighs next to nothing. But a two-inch thick icicle in the shape and size of a leaf... that's the kind of weight that can drop branches.

It actually makes a lot of sense, and if I wasn't still pissed about the power outage, I'd still say it's a beautiful thing. Trees in the north don't drop their leaves earlier just becuse they don't need them in the cold, sunless winter. They drop them in self defense! Because keeping them when a little bit of ice hits the ground

So when people down here say we don't have the infrastructure to handle the cold, they aren't just talking about the supply-chains, the insulation, the weather-proof piping, and the snow-plows. They're talking about the trees! The trees can't handle it either!

I hear that on Friday there was a call out for people to watch the television series Firefly by Joss Whedon, for fear that it would be canceled without better ratings. I wasn't devoted to the series but I did think it held promise and had planned on watching (or recording anyway) it on Friday. Sorry to all the fans out there. From what I've been hearing on Zentertainment and such, it looks like I killed the series--I'm sure the points I would've added would have put it over the top.

On Saturday we took pictures. Most of the ice had already melted (Yes, by this point I had also lost all the frozen food.), so I missed some great shots. But there was enough to make it worthwhile. Those are the shots that accompany this entry.

As many of you know, I work from our apartment, both with the day-job and with my own creative development "Studios." So every day I got a little more frustrated that I wasn't working, and a little more worried about how far behind I was getting. I did what I could where I could with my trusty iBook.

On Sunday the phones started working again (most people didn't lose phone at all, it turns out) and many of the apartment complexes in our area had gotten their electricity back up. While walking to our mailbox gazebo a car pulled up and a guy about my age asked if we had electricity yet.

I said no. He said his father worked for our energy company. "Yeah, he's the CEO or the CFO," he said, "and I'm really pissed at him. He said they moved all the crews to downtown Durham." In the paper that morning I had read that Durham was hit the hardest and was also the slowest to get power restored fully (yes, geniuses, these two tidbits are related). But this one added, "My girlfriend lives in your apartment building so I asked him when you guys'll get power back. He looked it up in his special computer..."

I swear he used those words. His father had a "special computer."

"... and he said it would be Wednesday."

I didn't wonder for a second whether he was telling the truth. More I was wondering what his motivation was for telling the story. But when he said, "Wednesday," indicating that we would be the last on the list (at the time the ETA for all areas was Wednesday. I believe the deadline moved a few more times), my heart sank a little. It got above 50 degrees (for the first time since the outage began) that day, so while I listened to his bullshit, anything from the fridge that hadn't already spoiled was finally giving up the ghost. I didn't believe his father had anything to do with our power company, but, after four days without power, I did believe we would be a full week without power.

The power did come back on on Monday. Four and a half days was the total without heat or electricity. But we survived. The cable internet and cable didn't come back on until Wednesday, and I unfortunately rely on the internet for my work (both day job and night job) more heavily than most people. And almost missing the season finale of the Sopranos was a worry as well. Yes, I've become spoiled in my old age. Yes, I'm thankful that we had heat and electricity to get back in the first place and I thought more than a few times about those who didn't.

That's the story of the ice storm and that's how I began my month. But, alas, the story doesn't end there. The power outage put me waaaay behind in day and night work. AudioBookMaker was badly in need of a maintenence update, a whole lot of website work, and the long-awaited next issue of my newsletter was promised for December. but I needed to do the day-job catching up first. And I was almost caught up, ready to start on the fun stuff when we began a two week working vacation for Christmas in Akron/Cleveland, a wedding in Washington DC, and a New Year's Eve in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

On day one of the working vacation, my computer started acting funny. On day two my watch literally broke off my wrist. On day three I hit a deer with a car and had a hard drive failure. On day four I found out I busted my radiator when I hit the deer (I knew the damage was bad, but thought it was mostly cosmetic, that busted-up plastic was the extent of it). I was able to keep working (a story for a later date) barely and we didn't end our vacation early, but I came home so far behind in all my work that I've been doing very little OTHER than that work until now. Now I'm about caught up with the day-job, so it's back to what I consider my "real" work. Fifteen days home with electricity, heat, internet connection, and nothing major going wrong does wonders for productivity.

So thanks for your thoughts, those who wrote with concern for our well-being. Sorry I haven't been responsive to emails, personal, professional, or otherwise. I also apologize for this entry being so disjointed and all. I haven't done any writing except for freewriting in over 45 days. It's good to be back.

Filed under Carrboro Area, Journal, Vanity Smurf

Comments: Discuss this entry at LiveJournal

Posted by: Mike Jasper at September 11, 2005 12:19 PM