Got power back at about 530 yesterday evening. Of course, this was less than 10 hours after I scored one of the last 3 generators at Lowe's - they got a short shipment of a couple dozen in at 7, opened the store at 730 and were sold out by 10. But I don't care. I'm so fucking tired of this Post-Apocalypse bullshit I could spit bricks thru a car door.
The phones came back maybe 15 minutes ago, so I needed to grab some webtime and post some of this before the next storm starts in earnest. The phone issue has been very annoying. Losing the land line is bad enough, but the power outage also took out our local cell tower, so communications has been difficult as well.
It's already been flurrying a bit off and on all morning. Forecasters are saying we'll get 4-8 more inches tonite. Given the sorry state of the grid to begin with, and the simple fact that lots of trees are bent and damaged and ready to go, it shouldn't take much to put us back to where we were 3 days ago.
But at least I've got enough juice now to run the Reefer, 2 space heaters and various lights and appliances. I also scored 2 more Jerry cans, so I can run for 30 hours if we're a little careful.
The main thing is figuring out how best to heat the joint. If I didn't hafta run the space heaters, I could stretch the gas out to several days. Nick and Luke have been scavenging from the woods, but trudging thru 2 feet of snow across the open ground before you get to the woods is a real chore. Plus, you gotta load up the little sled and drag it all back to the house. Once back at the house, we can use the electric chainsaw, I've resisted buying the gas-powered version, thinking I'll convert a couple of the fireplaces to some other fuel once this is all over.
The other thing I'll be working on is figuring out a way to take the whole subdivision off the grid. We have a gas main that runs pretty close, and we've been approached once before to see if enough of us wanted to convert from propane to natural. The attempt failed, but it might be a really good time to ask again. I'm thinking we could do a mid-sized fuel cell generator and stop worrying about the power going out every stinkin' time more than 11 snow flakes get together. Distributed Power Generation is something that'll probably have to happen at some time anyway because the traditional grid system is aging badly and becoming ridiculously expensive to maintain. It's stupid to go on pouring billions into a system that won't be able to keep up with us.
Schools have been closed 6 out of the last 7 days.
Challenges remain, but we're working the problems one at a time, hoping to turn a couple of them into opportunities.
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