No lights, no phone, no Internet
It's as primitive as can be...

So the ice storm knocked out everything in our area and the power company is hedging it's bets. We were originally told up to three days but now parts of the state may not see power until Christmas. And yes, we are one of those areas.

Good news:  We had a wood stove installed just the week before. As previously mentioned, I'd been cutting trees in expectation of using said wood stove this past year so we have a small store of fuel to keep us warm. I just didn't expect to need it so soon or so long.

When I found out on Friday that we would be without power for several days I immediately went searching for a generator. I got to Big Box Store just in time to see the last one leave the building. It seems everyone and their brother wanted one today. Not to be deterred, I asked a nice young lady in customer service to check other stores for me. I was then informed that they were completely out all the way down to New Jersey.

Oops.

So I says to my self, "if they are out going South, let's try North." and promptly called Mom.

I am not ashamed to say I call my Mom for help.  "Mom!  Quick!  Call Big Box Store and see if they have any generators in stock.  Check other stores, too! I'm driving up now so just find one."

She found one and called my brother to pick it up. It seems that everyone and their brother were coming North from Massachusetts and New Hampshire to get them and this was one of the last in stock. Big Bro started driving South and met me in the middle of Vermont where we made the exchange from one truck to the other. I can't help wondering if our grandfather made a similar run at some point - not for a generator but to bring South that prohibited beverage during his youth at the beginning of the last century.

Back home I sent Melissa to get gas. Little did we know that everyone and their brother wanted gas for their generators, too. So she had to drive into the city before finding a station with power and gas, a necessary combination as most by this time had only one or the other, thus rendering their services obsolete.

That night I got the refrigerator and freezer plugged in and thus our investment in ice cream was secure. Saturday, a friend of mine came over and showed me how to get the whole house up and running but it wasn't until Saturday afternoon that I figured out how to Drury-rig (you may have heard it as "jury-rig" but I assure you my term is correct in this instance) the 240 volts required to run the well pump.

So we have (some) power, heat, and propane cooking stoves. No cable TV, however. Many in our area aren't so fortunate and we had an impromptu pot-luck at the church. The corn bread baked over the wood stove came out well (a little over done on the bottom but overall an excellent first attempt at baking over a fire) and the large pot of turkey soup was wonderful.

One thing we saw was that the full moon shown on the ice at the tips of all the trees and there appeared to be a thousand new constellations in the sky. Melissa wished she had a camera capable of capturing that scene but we don't. Just imagine tiny lights dancing at the end of every branch.

God continues to be good and watches out for fools.