so
its sunday night, and we go to bed with freezing rain falling and collecting on trees very rapidly. we didn't sleep well that night, and then the power went out at about 6am monday. we got up around nine and showered in the diminishing warmth of our powerless house (thankfully we had hot water and a gas stove). i went to work at about 11am, but lindsay stayed home from work, as her boss had lost power at his house where she works. unbenounced to me, at about noon my wife and my ex-wife took off on a road trip in search of a heater for my ex and the girls, and a surprise for lindsay and me (only a surprise to me).
as for me, i went to work on what turned out to be the busiest day i have ever been a part of. as i drove in to work i literally watched limb after limb fall from trees and generally mess things up alot. all day i was busy delivering hot pizza to people who had lost power and were hungry. on my second delivery of the day i had a bit of excitement of my own. i had just made a delivery to a house and was walking back to my van when a branch crashed to the ground about ten feet from me. as i was driving away from the house a huge limb (about half a tree) fell and clipped the very back end of the van, leaving a small dent at the very back. had i not moved the eight feet or so i had moved away, the limb would have smashed my van in half and probably killed me. i could tell it would be an interesting day :)
i made deliveries like crazy til about 5pm or so. it was monday and we had our monday carry-out special and with the weather and that for some reason (the fact that we were one of only three stores open in the whole city) we got totally fucking slammed that night. people came from all over the city to get pizza on what turned out to be a 1500+ order night that they had to shut down at 8pm to be able to get everything cooked and out by 11pm. i have never seen that many orders in one store ever. there were very few delivery orders for what turned out to be many drivers there that night. many boxes got folded and many dishes washed, but mostly the drivers stood around in the back and talked. the cooks and managers were doing all the cooking, cutting, boxing, and getting orders to the fifty or so we had in line all night long.
so, i cut out at about 830pm and went home to collapse and rest. i came home to darkness lit by a few candles. i discovered my surprise by knocking down a barrier set up by the front door when i came in. i cussed and grumbled a bit but then i saw the new addition to our family. i really couldn't see her very well, and was more concerned about what she cost. lindsay had bought a brand new 2 week old chinese charpei puppygirl, and i was pissed. so i went back to the bedroom to change into warm clothes and calm down a bit. by the time i got changed the cold was really seeping thru the walls, and i quickly got over my grumpiness when i met little miss hannah. she is absolutely adorable, and my wife's christmas present. i am off the hook :)
that's about all the good news i have about things, as while i was at work a big limb fell in the back yard and knocked down our power and cable wires, and damaging our electric meter box, so not only was the power out, it was out til i could get an electrician out to put it all back together. so we spent the night bundled up in the living room listening to the radio and to the sound of limbs breaking and falling all over the dead quiet neighborhood. it was quite eerie sitting in the semi-dark, breathing the cold air, having colds and feeling quite crappy. so we slept in our bed, piled high with blankets and really slept quite well aside from the crack and crash outside all night.
we woke up tuesday morning and it was freezing, of course. we took our hot showers and quickly dried off and dressed. i went to work at 11am again, and lindsay again stayed home. she made some calls, but otherwise spent the day playing with elizabeth's gameboy, listening to the radio for storm updates and such. work was a real pain in the ass. the computers were down so we had hand written tickets and orders called in from the call center to cell phones. it was a mess and other than the rain and temps that eeked just above freezing started the trees a melting, so the sounds of cracking and falling were fewer and further in between. i left work at about 5pm, went to the store and bought a crapload of food in cans and boxes, then went home and spent the quiet night alone with lindsay, getting to sleep around midnight. my boss called at around ten to let me know the store had no power and would not open the next day.
so on wednesday morning, lindsay and i went in search of needed supplies to get us through what was quickly looking like a long term power outage. we drove south first, stopping to find generators, heaters, and other such things all bought out. we ended up about an hour south of tulsa, at a wal mart, walking in just in time to buy a big 5700 watt generator right off the truck. we barely managed to get the thing into lindsay's car, but did, and took it home. after we got home and unloaded, i went in search of gas cans and gas. i ended up driving around for about an hour before i ended up at the first store we had stopped at that morning and they had the cans. i took off and headed back towards home, knowing i had to get the gas on the way. i decided to stop at the store closest to my house, but they ran out of gas just before i got there. luckily i was able to fill up the cans and the van across the street at the shell station, and made it home to set up the generator. i thought i could set it up in the garage with the big door propped open about a foot and the back door propped open, but the garage filled up with very smelly smoke, and we decided to tough it out in the cold for one more night and tackle the problem in the morning.
i woke up wednesday feeling icky, and the traveling around and hauling the gasoline and whatnot made me really sick. i woke up thursday feeling like crap, and called my boss to let her know, i got her voicemail and left a message. lindsay's boss called her to tell her he had power and some work for her to get done so she went to work and i stayed home and slept most of the day. i woke up and got some things done around the house to get ready for the generator being moved out back under the eaves. lindsay called me at about 230 to ask my help with her boss's computer, so i went there with laptop in tow and set them up and used the network to update the checkbook and a few other things. when lindsay was done we went to wal mart to get an electric heater and some other supplies, then home to set up house.
we powered up the generator and hooked up the cords and turned on the heater, a small tv and dvd player, and a few lights. all the frozen and fresh food we had was already in the garbage, so we had no need to power up the refrigerator and no way to power up the furnace. we spent the evening and the night watching movies, huddled in front of the heater with the dogs, just passing the time. it was a really nice night, actually. temps were above freezing so all the ice was gone, and the recovery work was underway, but everything was freaky quiet outside. we slept with the heater in the bedroom and actually had to take a blanket off the bed :)
we both worked on friday, and came home to our little livingroom space, blankets stapled up over doorways to keep the space warmer. we watched some local tv, remembering why i watch re-runs rather than prime time tv. we watched movies all weekend, it snowed on saturday a bit, and sunday i watched football all day. our little adventure was becoming sort of routine, tolerable but not very much so.we had enough power to wait out the time it would take to get it back on. we could run the generator for about ten hours on five gallons of gasoline, and i had two five gallon gas cans. i went to the gas station every night and filled the cans, and used the generator all day saturday and sunday. the electrician came out on monday and replaced our meter box and pole, then hooked up our power wire. we had to wait til tuesday afternoon while we were both at work before the power came back on, but it did come back on, yay! the cable people finally came out today, thursday and hooked our cable back up, and so i thought i would write it down.
so here we are, sitting in our livingroom watching tv, we like re-runs. the storm took only about twenty four hours to knock most of our whole state out for a week or more, but okies are tough, we bounce back. alot of oklahoma, especially in tulsa, looks like a war zone, trees down everywhere, it will be a long time before things look right again. i guess we'll just have to get used to it.
oh, merry christmas and all that crap.
g'nite.