Seattle is a beautiful place. It's green all over. The problem with all this great greenery is when Mother Nature decides to throw some wind at it, it all falls down. On top of power lines.
Between that and the rain this place is a mess. I've been out of power for two days now. Everything's pretty higgeldy piggeldy around here. They expect it to take a few more days to get things back on track.
They got the power back on in my office and that's where I'm at right now. I brought the kids in and we're hanging out until things are charged and then we head home. They brought the poker set and they're playing Texas Hold'em in the conference room. At least I can charge up my cel phone and stuff. In an ironic note, the only warm place in the building is my server room, which is about 80 degrees because the air conditioning's been off in there with all those computers blowing heat since the power came back on in here this morning. The HVAC still hasn't gotten it's ducks back in a row and I don't expect it to until next week sometime.
It looks it's trying to snow on top of all this. We're back in the freezing range and with no power that means no heat for a lot of people around here. We have a fireplace in my apartment and stuff so we're good, but it's been interesting. I haven't chopped firewood in a LOONNNGGG time and boy does my back know it.
Needless to say, this was not in the schedule for getting Christmas ready or anything else.
We're all okay. I'll be in and out as time/power permits. For the usual over-wrought news portrayals, you can go to http://www.king5.com
Bing Crosby - Adeste Fideles (O Come All Ye Faithful) (Visualizer)
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This isn't the same Bing Crosby rendition of *Adeste Fideles *my parents
had on a Christmas album of his from the early 1950s, but it's close enough
to ev...
1 day ago
6 comments:
Oh, and on a happier note, it looks like Google figured out what bug I ran into when I migrated the rest of my blogs over to the beta version of Blogger. So now it's safe for me to post again. ;)
Hey, my brother lives in the Seattle, as well as half of the rest of my family.
I just did the stupidest thing in the world and emailed him to ask if his power was on....
K
(Oh, and glad you're all right too.)
Kiefus, thank you. I've been seeing stuff like that all over. ;)
Question is, did he answer?
We're still out, but they got the downtown Redmond area back on at least so the grocery stores and stuff can work. Now it's hard to get gasoline and propane. There are lines down the street at the stations that have it. I'll be joining one as soon as I'm done here. Then we're off to cut more firewood.
We're all still fine. I was worried about our pet rat because while the fireplace will keep things okay for a human in a sweater, it definately wasn't in the comfort zone. He cuddled with us for most of the night but he had to get back into his cage to eat and sleep. Turned out fine - he just burrowed right into his bed and has hung in like a trooper.
No snow yet, but they're threatening it every time I turn on the car radio. It did freeze. Not what I would call a hard frost but hard enough for around here. There's ice on the puddles and these single-pane windows just breathe the cold.
My server room is still a mess, but my boss got a fan in here and we're heating the rest of the office quite nicely trying to keep it cool in there. It hasn't gotten any worse, and we got the rest of the machines up and in the right order so everything talks to each other again and everything works.
The kids are officially bored with poker and Munchkin, so I ended up reading 10 chapters of Howl's Moving Castle to them by candlelight last night. My voice is shot.
It's kind of odd. I grew up in a harsh climate and in conditions that make this look like a vacation. We've been able to take care of ourselves and help our neighbors. I have the tools (because I'm a weirdo who considers a properly maintained axe an integral part of setting up a household). I know what to do. I'm glad. But when I was growing up, there was a part of it I was missing. The constant worry. Can I take care of the kids? Can I get us what we need? When the stakes are personal, it's one thing. When the kids get into it, it's another. It really makes me think about my Mom and what she went through raising us kids. She did this with nine kids ranging from 9 on down to newborn and she did it with no running water in the house and no neighbors closer than 60 miles.
No kidding, for all our problems, we live in easy times. (I think rats are better adapted to revert than people are.)
No, he didn't, but that's not unusual. But I'm thinking so long as there's fresh water and he survived his commute, probably all is roughly OK.
K (candlelight reading is kind of a charming picture btw, though ten chapters, eek!)
meanwhile, it's currently 60 here in the DC area.
isn't it like, late december or something?
In Vancouver on Friday it took me hours to run a couple of little errands. With traffic lights out, it was gridlock everywhere. I was sure I was going to miss my plane, but the drive to the airport was remarkably smooth.
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