Sunday, October 28, 2012

Happy Hallowe'en, Frankenstorm!

I just wanted to take a second to jot down an entry here while I'm still able to do so!  I live in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and if you aren't sure where that is, just go on to the Weather Channel, look at Hurricane Sandy's projected landfall tomorrow and follow the line of the path to the first city it hits.

That's me.

We got a robo-call from the power company earlier this evening warning us that we may be without power for a week or more.  My wife and I have been trying to have a whole-home generator installed for some weeks, but because of a whole bunch of unnecessary-in-my-humble-opinion red tape, we're still waiting for the gas company and their HVAC division to get their proverbial act together...and we will have no power for this crisis.  Like most of us, we depend on electricity for most of our house.  I can do without computers or entertainment or light for a week, but I hate the thought of all of the food we're going to lose.  And I hate even more the thought of doing without heat until such time as the United States removes its head from its posterior and leaves the 19th Century for the 21st and stops stringing its power wires on poles!  Put the bloody things underground like most of the rest of the civilized world, won't you?  This isn't the bloody Wild West, after all.

Temperatures are expected to run in the 40s F.  It's going to be damned cold in here if it goes on for the week they're warning me about.

And since the storm is about 700 miles across and is moving at about 10-12 miles per hour, we can expect this nonsense to last for days.  I can't wait until tomorrow when we have to try to walk the poor dog in winds of 40 mph while eight to ten inches of rain are dumping down simultaneously.  Oh, wait.  Yes, I can.

My telephone, internet and entertainment are provided by a fibre-optic system which has a battery backup for power failures that will last us about eight hours.  After that, I will no longer have access to my land line.  We will have to run out to the car to charge up our cell phones, but at least we will have those.

So, if ten days or so pass, and this blog has not been updated, well, it's been swell, folks.  My sincere thanks to the over 5,000 visitors who have dropped by over the past couple of years.  I wish more of you had left comments or votes, but just the fact that you were here means more to me than I can properly express.  I hope the experts are wrong, I hope the storm moves more quickly and with less power than predicted, and I hope that I still have power, and enough food, and a roof on my home.  And I hope the same for everyone else in this historic "perfect" storm's path.  May all of us be safe, be well, and most of all, be a little lucky.

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