Unplugged

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I wrote this by candlelight ... and then transcribed it this morning....

The "Great Blackout" [for those who missed it, the entire San Diego County, bits of Orange County, bits of Arizona and Mexico had no power for up to 12 hours last night] made me aware how ill-prepared we are for an emergency, but oddly I wasn't freaking out over it.

We had a few days worth of food (probably a week once we started in on the cereal) and we still had running water -- but our emergency, hand-cranked radio up and died within minutes of turning it on. Thankfully, the hubby scrounged up some batteries.

We have a BBQ with propane, thank goodness. So dinner was clam chowder by candlelight. (Wish I'd taken a picture, but oh well!)

It was really odd that I wasn't freaking out. It probably helped that I was able to call Mum on a land line and let her know I'm okay.

While waiting for traffic to ease at church (where I work--the outage started at 3:40pm), I handed out melting ice cream sandwiches from our freezer to Catholic students about to go on retreat, folks who had parked in our lot to take advantage of the shade, waiting out the traffic because they were low on gas, and then over to our neighboring church because they have a school attached and there were plenty of folks hanging around there too.

We gave out water and made our bathrooms available to folks who came knocking on our door (this is before I started handing out ice cream!). We should've put out signs really :)

....

Much later, we went to look at the stars, with no city lights to hide them, but the moon is almost full, so they weren't as spectacular as the new moon in Julian a couple of weeks ago.  The air was nice and refreshing after a very hot day.

....

After 9pm, listening to our battery-powered radio, candles flickering, listening as one by one, the communities north and south of us slowly come back on line.

....

The power came back much sooner than they predicted (for us in the wee hours of the morning), so our slight unpreparedness won't undo us. But I have a shopping list now!

Comments

  1. Shane PollardSeptember 11, 2011 at 1:43 PM

    Dear leanne
    oh you poor things - the candlelit dinner must have been lovely tho~
    makes us think of our forebears, and how their days were so different to ours. they didn't burn the midnight oil too often - too xpensive - early to bed - early to rise!

    im stil drooling over the beautiful laces etcet in yr last post - sigh!
    xx

    ReplyDelete

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