First Fall Storm
All my rain dancing paid off. Thursday afternoon, I began to celebrate the incoming storm that was forecast for Friday. The few drizzles that we had Thursday around lunchtime were merely teasers. I planned to work from home on Friday so I was more than ready and looking forward to the rain. We stocked up on all the supplies we’d need: food (canned, frozen and fresh), firewood, fire logs, gas for the generator and of course a bottle or two of wine to sip in the evenings. Friday, sure enough, like clockwork I was happy to see the rain begin to fall. Thank goodness the weather guy was actually accurate in his weather predictions!
All, particularly Dee and Celia, two women whom I ride the bus to work with, do not share my high-spirited zest and love for the rainy weather. Both of them love the hot, summers and summer heat. Celia already forewarned me that if she looses power at her house this weekend that she would be sending me a text message! You can also add my husband to that list, because every time there is a big rainstorm, the power goes out. The power outage means that he’ll be standing outside with a flashlight in one hand, the gas can in the other, trying to get the generator going. Which is exactly what happened. The lights started to flicker – on and off, multiple times — and then they went out. At that very second, I heard the word, “crap” echoing from the room across the hallway. Oh wait, no, that was me saying crap! I was the one working on my blog post and video. But, like clockwork, Bill hauls himself out to the garage, gearing up for the trek outside to the shed that houses the generator. He knew I was in the middle of a blog post and that I had signed up for NaBloPoMo. And he knew that I needed to get that blog post online; otherwise, I’d end up having to drive to the coffee house at the next town over in order to use their Internet connection. Luckily, for me, my husband can’t live without his precious Internet, so our router is hooked up to the generator, which means Internet service even when the power goes out (although we have had storms severe enough which knock out EVRERYTHING, including said precious Internet).
I sit there in the dark, holding a flashlight, Webster at my feet part of the time. The other half of his time is spent running up and down the stairs and into the entry way, whining because Bill is outside instead of inside with us. But Bill has the routine down like clockwork. The generator fires up, we flip the inside switch and whoala, there is light. Then he’s off once again, outside, this time to wrestle with the roof gutters, which have now clogged up due to all the redwood tree debris blown in by the wind. We now have our own, semi-natural waterfall gushing from the front gutter. And so the cycle continues – more than once.
But all’s well that ends well; the generator kicked in, power came on, extension cords were dragged through the house and into my home office, the Mac was fired up, blog post written and posted. We did it! Ahh, and now back to bliss (or so I thought). Little did I know that the storm was about to get worse, and what I would lose would be more than electricity!
November 2nd, 2008 at 1:06 pm
It looks wet out there, and windy, and cold. But at least it isn’t snow.
November 8th, 2008 at 11:36 am
[...] wind had picked up, as did the rain. Our first fall storm continued. However, in spite of the flickering power and lights, I was perfectly content. After all, we were [...]