The power went out yesterday morning while I was checking my email, just before taking my shower. It is pretty darn dark in a basement without lights. Luckily I know the lay of the land well and found my way back upstairs. The problem though, other then not being able to see, is that my Mother-In-Law has a well. And that means there was limited water left in the pump, making a shower almost impossible. Especially since some of us still needed to use other facilities that require water.
After calling PP&L a few times, we heard that the estimated time our power would be back was 11:00. I called my supervisor at work and told him I would be late, or possibly not in at all. (I just can’t stand the idea of going to work, all dressed up, without having taken a shower.) Marcia and I decided to go out for breakfast, given that the house was already starting to get cold, and that we couldn’t fix anything for Nigel’s breakfast.
On our way back, knowing the power wasn’t on yet, we decided to go up the hill (my Mother-In-Law lives at the end of a street that is at the bottom of a hill) and see if we can find the reason for the problem. Sure enough, not more then a mile up the road, there were cones around a downed line. No crews working on it though. It was right by a tight curve, and given that it appeared that some branches were down, we figured that there may be more then this one line, so we took the back roads to the other end of our road to see the other side. There was nothing. Just the one line and no one working on it. However, we did notice that area got a considerable amount of more snow. Many branches in trees were sagging with the weight of snow. It was amazing to see such a difference so close. As we drove around more to waste some time, we found some areas that got even more snow (over 5 inches) and other areas that had hardly any snow at all, all within a few miles.
After some time, we needed to use the facilities again, so Marcia called her Grammie. We headed over and spent the next two hours visiting her while Nigel played, and we also gave him a little bit of something for lunch. Marcia called the PP&L again and found out that there was more damage then originally thought, and the power would be out until 1:00. We started heading back home a bit before one and stopped at a gas station to get some gas when two PP&L trucks pulled in to gas-up as well. That was just a little after 1:00, so their second estimate was pretty good.
I am not too fond of taking a day off of work for things like this. But it turned into a relaxing day. (And I haven’t been very busy at work anyway.)
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