chessandlena.com

We has power. I can has heat?

The furnace is pushing like a champ, but I'm still shivering as I write this. The furnace should have the house toasty warm soon.

Today marks day 5 of frozen exile to the undisclosed location north of the fort, which henceforth shall be known as the redoubt. Last night was fun-- we watched Silence of the Lambs, which is the best Christmas movie ever, and had an Arabian feast of kabsa, fattoush, and mint tea (meaning only mint leaves made the tea, not regular tea with mint added-- it's entirely different).

The water is still running in Sticky Hall, which is good-- I'd rather trade an extra fifty bucks on a water bill for a thousand on a plumbing bill. We seem to have weathered the extreme temperatures of 2 days ago (zero degrees fahrenheit, yes, that's fahrenheit) without pipes freezing and bursting, so yay and knock on wood. It's warmer today, with the temperature climbing back to a balmy 25 degrees fahrenheit.

As of 10 am today, the power company said there were only about 17.5 K residents without power, and since the temperature and wind are cooperating, and since they have almost one and a half thousand additional workers from other states helping, they're moving along rapidly. So that's good, and I'm optimistic about today. The bad news is, our division is kind of smallish... no way we're on the top of their list. So I'm cautiously optimistic.

That is all. More info as we go.

Here are a few sample pics from the evacuated compound. No real updates; power still out, everything still intact, cold as hell.

Writing this post from a secure undisclosed location north of the ice-encrusted hills of the fort, which fell victim to a massive freeze-ray attack Friday and Saturday. The sudden barrage of ice left over half of the city without power on Friday night, and we were no exception. We toughed it out at home that night, grabbing some crappy, ridiculously-overpriced firewood bundles and moving our futon into Sticky Hall (room with fireplace). We made it, but it was a cold, cold, losing battle. The temperature outside dropped, the fire waned, the thermostat sank slowly down. We admitted defeat and called around, but there just aren't many options available to two humans and three felines... and we weren't going to leave our pampered, and somewhat stupid housecats there to freeze. So, up north we went. And remain.

We're headed south again today to pick up a few things, see if power miraculously happens to be available, and go from there. Also to see if we can locate and destroy the freeze ray, and find the supervillain who has the city in his ice-cold clutches.

I know, I know, all signs point to Mr. Freeze. But he typically doesn't do attacks on this scale without some kind of daclaration, you know? No, my bet's on some new, young upstart... preferably from the Marvel universe so we can kill him. No one ever dies in the DC universe, after all.

But damn. This has quite sucked. Checked up on friends today... most are faring, if not faring well. More later.