Lights Out!

High winds the other night knocked out our electricity and broadband and phone lines and they tell us not to expect to get power back on in our area before next week. Apparently it's the high-tension lines that bring power from the dams on the other side of the mountains that are damaged and the outages are widespread.

Right now the outage is, for us, still in the category of "minor inconvenience." We have a wood-burning stove for heat, and a propane camp stove for cooking, and a creek to provide water for flushing toilets and such, and even a water filtration device to make the creek water potable if we run out of clean water. We have nifty little LED head lamps to read and cook by and plenty of candles for ambient light. The power stayed on at my office in the city so I drove in this morning to shower and read the newspaper online and blog.

Last night I emptied the contents of the refrigerator into baskets that are stored on the porch where daytime temps are still in refrigeration range and we are eating our way through the perishables. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the food in the big freezer in the garage stays frozen. While I don't have anything like Lottie's quantities of food put by, there's an awful lot there to try and use up if it begins to thaw.

I'd planned to bring in the Christmas tree and start putting lights on it but of course that's a job that's easier to do if the lights are lit. Same with the lights on the trees outside, which I'd planned to do last weekend but it was raining too hard. Maybe I'll start wrapping presents instead.

In chicken news, someone laid an egg this morning! It's been over a month, what with molting, and cold, and dark, and some of the girls having gone into retirement. I guess they know what I have in mind for the week I'm off work after Christmas. That won't help the roosters, though. Five roos are four roos too many and I'm keen to try this recipe.