Ann Leckie

So it’s coming up on 48 hours since I had electricity at home. I’ve been in sporadic contact with the outside world via my phone (kept charged with my collection of external batteries, all of which are pretty much drained at this point. They would have lasted longer but the 19 yr old discovered Pokemon Go and with the power out all over the place we might as well go out and walk, right?), but today I’ve gone to the library and am availing myself of an outlet and the free wifi so I can catch up with emails that really need more of a reply than is convenient to type on a tiny touchscreen. If you need to get hold of me, I will be difficult to find until the power goes on again.

Which may be a few days yet. The other day a brief storm blew through, mostly no big deal but there were very high winds on the leading edge, and lots of trees and power lines went down all over the place. The electric folks are scrambling to get everyone reconnected, but there are a lot of places unconnected.

I didn’t need the AC anyway! (If I say that often enough I might believe it.) Possibly worse than being without AC or even fans in July is the fact that I had just bought a bunch of food and put it in the basement freezer. I’ve put as much as I can on ice in coolers, and we’re cooking things like raw chicken, or ground meat and icing those cooked, because those are the riskiest to store raw when your refrigeration is unreliable. On the down side, this was stuff meant to last for a few weeks; three hours before the storm rolled through I’d gone to Time For Dinner, a place where you make a bunch of pre-planned main dishes, package them up and take them home and put them in your freezer. Then whenever you just don’t feel like doing anything for dinner but you want something good, you pull one out and throw it in the oven or on the grill or whatever. It was my first visit there. And there’s other stuff in the fridge and freezer that’s definitely a loss. On the up side, dang the TfD stuff tastes good. A+ will visit again. And the basement freezer needed defrosting anyway.

Still, it’s seriously annoying. It’s throwing off my work routine and making me difficult to contact. Sorry about that–there isn’t much to do except try to get to the library when I can.