The Adventure
We were lucky because Mark worked from home on Friday due to the impending blizzard and I always work from home. It was delightful to spend more time with my husband and to not be worried that he was going to have trouble getting home in the storm. The day went fairly well and then around 3:30pm, my computer went black. Mark feared a hard drive crash which would have been more annoying than disastrous since I back up my computer twice a day on Mozy and all my work files are double backed up on Drop Box. Anyhow, that was the end of work for me for the day though I am grateful that my husband works in IT and he began working immediately on my computer since he had not received any issues from work in a while. We decided to go for a walk in the storm down to the beach which was really nice and had a good dinner before the lights started flickering. At that point, we decided to unplug any electronics in the house for fear of power surges despite the fact that everything is on power strips. Around 9pm, we lost power for good. When Mark took the dog outside to do her business, the wind was blowing strong enough that she nearly fell over and she became blanketed in snow almost immediately. Reasonably, she decided not to do her business. The next morning, we were really and truly snowed in. The house had gone from 70 degrees to 60 overnight. We closed off our bedroom which was even colder since it is over the garage and we started to make plans for the day. Phones were only sometimes working and we worried that a cell tower must be down. We tried shoveling out the driveway and managed the sections that were 1-2 feet. When we hit the drifts, morale dropped. So, we decided to walk to my sister's house (1.2 miles away) since she has both a generator and a snow blower. Luckily, the streets had been plowed at some point. Unfortunately, they still were super sloppy and most had at least 6 inches of snow. Regardless, we made it to my sister's house without incident. Her generator had died that morning and a neighbor had broken their snow blower. We ate lunch with them, were assured that lighting our gas stove with a match would not cause our house to blow up, and enjoyed their slightly warmer house. My brother-in-law managed to fix the snow blower with random nuts and bolts, we loaded the snow blower into his minivan, and we ignored the travel ban to drive back to our house. Morale improved as Mark was able to easily clear the drive way. We spent the rest of the day reading and we moved our queen mattress into the basement which stayed around 58 while the rest of the house continued to get colder. The next morning, the house was 47 degrees (although the basement was still 55 degrees and my bedroom had dipped to 41) and morale was super low. We decided to pack up the car and head to our condo which is empty, but has not yet sold and had both power and heat. We got to the condo to find that snow removal had not occurred and there was despair. Luckily, I got an email from minervaish just about then offering respite and we made a quick decision to be saved. We were given hot showers, hot food, and a much needed morale boost. We headed home in the afternoon to find many utility vehicles in our area and while we had hope, we did not have power. Luckily, we already had plans for the evening and after leaving the dog in the basement to try and stay warm, we headed back to Providence to see American Idiot. The show was amazing and completely took my mind off my own problems. Afterwards, we had dinner at Gracie's and it was wonderful to feel like a real live human being. By the time we drove home around 11pm, I felt that luck might just be on our side. We got home to power and warmth. From the blinking clocks, it looks like we got back power around 9:30pm. Regardless of when it occurred, it was the best homecoming possible. We worked a bit to put our house back in order and Mark went back to work on my computer. By midnight, he had worked his magic and my computer was functioning. Even more amazing, it is possible that I did not lose my data. So, yes, a miraculous day, indeed. Today, I am exhausted but warm and somehow my weekend disappeared in a whirlwind of Nemo. Thank goodness next weekend is a long one!