PhoneBoy Says

From Lifeblog.

Was having an 80's flashback when I did this…

The power has returned to our house, and so has the heat. Neighbor called us this morning to let us know. Fridge had to be cleaned out from the ice that had melted. That ice, along with cranking the fridge temperature down several hours before we lost power along with keeping it closed saved most of the fridge contents. Same with the freezer.

Meanwhile, life is starting to return to normal for us at least. A lot of people in the region are still without power, though, and I'm sure they are anxious for it to come back on. Meanwhile, we are going to invest in a generator. This power outage thing is for the birds.

Not staying here tonight…

Nice to do something normal even if the situation at home isn't.

While we are still without power, they appear to be making some progress. Downtown Port Orchard had power last night, and the PSE status message sounds less gloom and doom. Once we check out of the hotel--we don't have a room here tonight--we'll go survey things ourselves firsthand. Got to feed the cats too as I'm sure they are both cold and hungry.

For those reading this on phoneboy.com, the tech content will resume once the homestead returns to normal.

The windstorm came and caused all kinds of havoc, but my family is safe. I'm going to be offline for a while. Check my Twitter timeline for updates (twitter.com/PhoneBoy) since SMS is easier now.

This is as much about a cool invention as it is a human interest story. I tell you, I wish I had a couple of these pots handy right about now, given how close we are to losing power.

We managed to keep the lights on long enough to get the kids to bed. But I can hear the wind and the rain picking up outside. At dusk, a tree blew into our driveway, obstructing our ability to drive out. Not that I particularly want to be anywhere but inside in these conditions. It will be something we have to deal with before leaving the homestead for sure.

Given that I'm seeing reports of 60+ mph winds in many inland areas in Western Washington already, I have no doubt that power will be out when we wake up in the morning.PSE is saying they've got crews ready and able to go fix things, but they're to wait for the storm to pass before going out and assessing damage and fixing things. The storm should finish doing its damage to this area by tomorrow morning.

How long it will take before we get the power back on is another matter entirely. Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire says we should expect the power to be out for several days, as does PSE. Hopefully we're not in the areas that will take "several days" to restore. :)

As I alluded to in my previous post, the weather is about to take a turn for the worse here. The nasty weather: high winds. It's the same kind of winds that knocked the power out yesterday, but these winds will be a bit stronger. This graphic I found on The Weather Channel website pretty much sums it up (note I live West of Seattle on the other side of the Puget Sound):

The "calm," if you can call it that, is on and off rain. The winds aren't too bad right now, but I expect that will change later in the day. I fully expect the power to go out sometime after the kids go to bed tonight, given that pretty much every time there's a serious windstorm here, we lose power. I fully expect chaos to ensue Friday morning. Good thing I've already got a day off scheduled for Friday already as well as the following Monday. It's going to be an interesting weekend…