Ice Storm

Everyone knows "Murphy's Law" but there are some adjuncts to it, one of which is the "Unspoken Law", which holds that as soon as you make a comment on something, if it's good it goes away and if it's bad, it happens...

After crowing the other day about keeping our electricity, fate stepped in and dealt a cruel hand. I (and some 250,000 of my closest friends) were without power for a couple of days after an ice storm hit right on the heels of the snow storm.

We were powerless for 41+ hours (others, not so fortunate, are still without electricity) and nothing makes you realize how dependent you are on technology than being deprived of it.

After the first night in a house that sank to 41 degrees internal temperature, I said, "Okay, I get it. You made your point. Now can I have some warmth?" I didn't get an answer to that plea, however.

We have a gas heater, but it's out in the garage and relies on electricity to force the warm air into the cold interior. I also had installed last year a "hot water on demand" system that, while it uses natural gas, still relies on ... electricity ... to make it work.

We had to go "old school" for our entertainment (old school being circa 2001) and use an old CD player that also plays .mp3 format tracks. Luckily I'm a fan and collector of so-called Old Time Radio shows, so after 34 episodes of Lum 'n' Abner, along with three episodes of Lights Out and three episodes of Sherlock Holmes, the lights finally came on and we fought like children to get in the shower first.

After an overnight temperature hovering in the 20s, we lost three trees out of a total of 19 on our small city lot (planted around the outside edge so none fell on the house), and a bunch of limbs that dropped off all around the neighborhood with annoying frequency and loud reports that sounded like gunshots, the temperature rapidly warmed up to nearly 50 when a coastal front finally moved in with enough rain to melt the ice. At one point I had to go outside to warm up, since the outside temperature was higher than the inside temperature...

It's a crazy world, all right, and if I hear one more person say some sarcastic remark about "so much for global warming" I'm gonna strangle 'em...