The nights the lights went out

By now, I am sure most of you have heard about the ice storm that hit the mid-west, and yes we were in the midst of it all. I am used to storms. You know the usual, high winds and lots of sideways rain with the electricity also going out at times. This storm was a little different. The temperature was down around 20 degrees or so and then it rained. There was no wind just cold temps and rain. I awoke on Tuesday morning to a winter wonderland of clear ice. It covered virtually every tree limb out to each small twig, every blade of grass, bush, electrical wires, even my car looked like a giant ice cube. As I stepped outside to take in the view I heard the sound of crashing limbs all around. It was the proverbial bowl of Rice Krispies, snap, crackle, pop. The area looked like a battle zone with tree limbs broken and laying everywhere. Limbs that had not yet broken were either touching the ground or draped over wires. Standing beneath any kind of tree would not have been adviseable with the liklihood of a branch tumbling down. The power was out of course but little did we know we would be without power for the next four days.
The good news about all of this is that we were able to practice our indoor camping skills. It was a test to see how prepared we were in the event of any emergency. I think we fared better than some in that we had a propane camp stove, two oil lamps, candles and flashlights. Jeremy and Lisa's house surprisingly stayed fairly comfortable heat wise. We donned extra socks and sweatshirts and were ok. We took perishable items such as the milk and placed it outside the back door as it was colder outside than in the refrigerator on a normal day. The other piece of good news was that our hot water tanks are gas so we had water and a good hot shower on any day is a good thing even if getting out makes one take great haste to get dressed. We went to a neighboring town and found a Walmart open so we hung out there for a couple of hours. Some church folks invited us over in the evening to share pizza, movies (their power was still on), and conversation with other people also without power. So all in all, we survived pretty well. Lisa's power came on Thursday night and mine came on sometime on Friday afternoon.
There are scattered people still without power but the crews from this area and from neighboring states have been working hard at restoring lines and getting our lives back to normal. And if there were not enough, it snowed Friday night and now we truly have a winter wonderland with about four inches of white fluff to top off the ice. So that was our week, how was yours??