Some Pictures… October 30, 2011

This gallery contains 11 photos.

October 29th Snow Storm…. isn’t it still fall?

Did not have power from Saturday night (Oct 29) through until Friday (Nov 4th) around 6pm.
Tom and I drove around looking for a hotel with power on Sunday (Oct 30).. and not being successful, we also drove around looking for gas! Waited 90 mins in line.. almost as bad as 1974!
Slept in the house..burrrr that night.
Monday, Tom was not able to attend meetings because of not having a place to shower/shave or prepare for his meetings. Which ended up “ok” since the hospital where he was going ended up opening a warm-up shelter in the conference room he was to have the meeting in anyway.
Monday evening we both drove down to Milford, CT (90 mins away, on the CT coast) to stay in a hotel.
Tuesday, Tom went to Waterbury (an hour away, from the hotel) for a benifits fair, I drove home to take care of the animals.. and freeze in the house some more….
By Tuesday the weather outside was much milder and actually warmer than inside!
A lot of the snow had melted and I discovered that we did have Hot Water!
SO all we were missing was heat and electricity in the house. (we have a gas stove and gas hot water heater as well as town water.. so those areas were working)
School was closed until at least wednesday… and later that day I was told that it would most likely be canceled Thursday too…
So I drove, with the dog, down to Westport, MA (90 mins southeast of us) to meet Tom at another hotel, which he had found to have power as well as allow dogs for a little extra per night.
We stayed there Tues night and Wed. night.
Orion and I went to the beach on Wed. while Tom was 20 mins away doing meetings in Providence, RI.
It was Orion’s first trip to the ocean and the waves scared him at first, but it quickly turned into a fun adventure!
He slept like a log the rest of the afternoon and evening when we got back to the hotel!
Thursday, Tom had an early set of meetings than a flight from RI to Baltimore, MD and onto Buffalo, NY!
I drove home with the dog Thursday around 10am. and spent Thurs night huddled under three heavy blankets and cuddled by both the cat and the dog!
Friday.. I had hoped to have power.. and since it was not back AND there was talk that we still may not have it back until Sunday or Monday(!) I decided to, finally, go buy a generator!
I got it home and asked the power guys (who were finally on our street!) if they could spare one or two to help me get it out of the car! There ended up being 6 crewmen coming over!
They got the generator out of the car and immediately started to put it together for me!
Then they got it started and I was on my way to trying to save a freezer full of meat as well as have a little heat in one room with an electric heater I remembered I had.
Friday night Tom was flying home but had a lot of work to get done.. so to be safe, he booked a room at a Providence, RI hotel for Fri & Sat nights.. so that he could get his work done.. and I could meet him if necessary.. since this hotel also allowed pets.

LUCKY for us.. the power DID come back on by 6pm.. which was too late to cancel the room, so I drove down to stay with Tom.
The generator had run long enough to get the freezer mostly back to freezing.. and with the electricity back the meat would be saved and the animals would be warm.

As it turned out.. Friday was one of my best friend’s birthday.. and she still did not have power.. so I asked if she wanted to come by, let Orion out to do his business and use my shower to get clean and warm up?
She and her husband were so grateful. Said that it was the best present ever!

Saturday, Tom and I returned and started to get live back in order.

Sunday, we watched football and Tom prepared for another week of travel.
He does have Friday, Nov. 11th off (per my insistence) and we have a nice day and evening planned too.

Our town and the one I drive a school bus for.. (as well as many of our surrounding towns) have not had school for a week.. Some communities have not had power returned even still!

However, we are all fine.. Donna spent a few days at her grammy’s house when College sent anyone who lived with in 3 hours from campus home. Grammy’s house (which is only 20 mins from college) had power by Monday. (she also has a fireplace and generators). Donna was back to school and classes by Wednesday.
Kevin came up here on Wednesday, with a friend and a trailer to cut up all the branches from our yard.. taking the large pieces of Oak home for the fire and piling the smaller pieces at the sides of the road for our DPW crews.

Home Projects

Anyway, This week is the bathroom down stairs… Gutted and putting in a new shower. a bigger one, yay! as all home projects end up being.. this one is becoming bigger and more of a hassle as it goes along. here are the pics as of last night..