The wife couldn't handle the cold anymore. To maintain her sanity, which is good for all of the family, she took the kids and drove to a friends house twenty-six miles away. The friend has power so they were able to get warm showers and keep warm. Before she left, I stuck a five-gallon container of water and Go bag in the back of the van. When I started to mention the water she started freaking out saying "Why would I need that!". <SIGH> What do you do with a non-prepper mind like that? I need to bring her up into the right frame of mind.
After the wife and kids left I got everything ship shape at home. After a bit of cleaning, I got tired of my dirty hair, which I was trying to grow out for the winter, and sat outside on the deck in the thirty-seven degrees air, and gave myself a crew cut. It was nippy before the haircut and extra nippy afterwards. It's wool knit cap time. After the crew cut, I hopped into the freezing shower, but before hand I had preheated the bathroom using my propane heater.
After the crew cut, I went out seeking warmth, caffeine and the internet at a local chain coffee shop. The place was packed and the line was nearly out the door. So I aborted the local chain coffee shop mission and walked around the corner to a local mom and pop coffee shop. There were plenty of seats and no line there. NOTE: Extension cords and power strips are needed in our modern day for laptops and cell phone charging. Add those to your prep kits.
The generator that I have has an oil leak. It appears to be getting worse as time goes on. I'm going to try to tighten up any loose bolts that I can find and see if that fixes it.
Have you ever heard about the "2 is 1 and 1 is none" rule? It's so true. I have now heard about four generator failures. My office, which handles the payroll for the Eastern half of the country's employees, had a failure over the weekend. Our county Emergency Operations Center (EOC) had a failure. A friend's company based in Manhattan had a failure and one of our two county based Red Cross shelters had a failure tonight. I believe in all cases those generators were repaired. But what about us little folk. When our generator fails do we know what to do with it?
I was driving to the county EOC when I saw a very short gas line at a gas station. I quickly pulled a U turn and got in line only to realize that with the gas rationing I could not fill up today. DAMN! DAMN! DAMN! Oh well, I can still go two-hundred miles or so before I have to worry about running out.
And now the inbound Nor'Easter we are expecting winds up to 65 mph with rain, sleet and snow Wednesday night into Thursday. I am making calls to churches throughout the county seeking ones that are available as warming shelters.
Dinner was a heater meal at the EOC.
Towards the end of the day I manned the front desk at our county EOC and managed to call current and former Community Emergency Response Team members to get help for the warming shelters that may be needed. With all the funky weather we've been getting one officer joked about getting a countdown clock to put in the war room of the EOC counting down from 12/21/12.
Lesson for the day:
Power strips and extension cords help to get you plugged in when being a techie vagabond. Get some!
Oh and why would this be called episode "21"? It's supposed to go down to 21 degrees tonight. Yeah, I'm gonna freeze critical body parts off if I don't hunker down in the blankets.
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