Update: I'm alright

Holy cow. It has been quite a weekend. I'm sure you can tell what's happening around here from the news. Needless to say, I had a hard time sleeping Thursday night. It's really unnerving to see massive trees sway in the wind like they are made out of rubber. I appreciate the well-wishes of those that have left comments here or have e-mailed. Here's what's happened since last I blogged:

Thursday night, the lights started flickering. I believe the electricity went out around 10 or 11 PM. I woke up at about 2 because of the noise outside. The rain was coming down sideways and hard. I moved to the back bedroom because I was a little worried about the trees on the front side of my house and the big window in the front. The first night wasn't too bad. When I woke up, I was just trying to get a sense of what happened, when we could expect the electricity to come back and what I needed to do to get by. I'm extremely fortunate to have amazing neighbors who have "adopted" me into their family. They have a gas fireplace and cook top. So I was able to have coffee (so necessary). I had a bunch of burgers in the freezer so we fired up their grill and had dinner by candlelight. I went home and slept in front of the fireplace. That was Friday.

Saturday, i took a shower (my hot water heater is gas....getting out of the shower is tough when it's so chilly) I went over again for coffee and we drove around. It's odd how one side of a street has power and the other doesn't. As of yesterday, parts of Redmond had electricity and we went out to eat, then went for dinner at my neigh ors' sons family's house (did I mention  how awesome my neighbors are?). I got my emergency radio and went to sleep in my living room cuddled up with Jonas (he never was that interested in cuddling before....I guess when the house is 45 degrees, he gets interested). I slept in a fleece jacket, hat, sweats, wool socks, etc.

This morning, I started to worry about my family being concerned and not knowing if I was OK. So I left a note on my door, packed up my laptop and my dog and started driving. My intended first step was the office to see if there was electricity and there is! What a relief. I came in and called each set of parents to let them know I was OK and logged on to make sure that the people I had conf calls scheduled with on Friday figured out what happened (some did, some didn't). Jonas is curled up on the floor next to me in my office. It's entirely possible that I will sleep here tonight as I am starting to run low on fire logs. I'm going to see if I can find an air mattress. I can come in here and close the blinds and snuggle up with my doggy. There's also hot coffee here (they have those iCups machines in the kitchens here) and I believe there's a shower on the third floor. Evidently, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Listening to the radio, there are people in worse shape than me; people that have no fire wood and aren't close enough to someplace that has heat. I at least feel like I have some options here since there's electricity close by. I've got about 6 layers of comforters and blankets sitting on my living room floor and i can sleep there in 45 (or less, by tonight) degrees or I can sleep here in the office. Weird.

My neighbors and I are going to make a little party tonight. My mom sent me steaks for my birthday. I also have that BBQ that Doug recommended. Well, the stuff in the freezer is not longer frozen, just cold. So it must be eaten. We are going to fire up the grill and grab some wine and make the best of it. I'll let you all know how things turn out and when we get our electricity back. This has definitely been the weirdest winter ever!

 

PS: if some of this doesn't make sense, I am going to blame it on the few hours of sleep I got last night on the cold floor : )