Day 1454

What a day! Our power is still out. After three days without power and temperatures in the 20's, the entire neighborhood feels like we've been abandoned. I finally talked with someone from the power company this morning. When I saw a guy in the alley wearing a hard hat and looking up at the power lines, I rushed outside to ask when we'd be getting our power back. The guy was nice enough, but he wasn't very encouraging. "We're just the assessment team," he told me. "This is a three stage process," he said. "First we identify the dead lines, then tree cutters come out and remove the debris around the lines, and finally the linemen will come and replace the damaged lines." "How long will that take," I asked. The man gave me one of those looks like he'd been asked this question way too often already. "It's a complicated process," he finally said. "I wouldn't expect anything to be fixed before Wednesday."

After that dismal assessment, I was happy to pack up my photo gear and head off to our third Santa Paws photo shoot for Dalmatian Rescue. Since the weather was still atrocious and it was sleeting again when I left the house, I didn't think anyone would show up for today's event. Surprisingly, we actually had a great crowd. Along with our usual assortment of Labs and small terriers, we photographed quite a few Dalmatians today, including one very cute puppy who seemed to really like Santa.

We took Dot and Dash with us to today's event, because we didn't want to leave them in the cold house. They were excited at first, and then were disgusted when they realized that they had to be kenneled while Janet and I worked. I think they were both happy to be warm again though, because after about fifteen minutes of barking in their kennel, they settled down on their dog beds and went to sleep.

I think the same people who designed the ObamaCare website designed the power company's emergency outage website. We've been looking at the website for three days now and nothing has changed. It looks like exactly the same number of houses are without power as there were when the storm started. I'm sure the power crews have done something, but you couldn't prove it by me. There are supposed to be over 3000 repairmen working on the problem, but I've only seen one. My guy seemed overwhelmed. He was from out of state, had a big bundle of engineering drawings in his hand, and was still looking for where the telephone poles were. This doesn't look good.

At the end of a very long day, Janet, the dogs and I are exhausted. We took the dogs to a dog friendly hotel and are relaxing over a nice dinner while we unwind and warm up. Lord knows what we'll have to deal with next week. I've got another lost UPS package to locate, five more articles to write, and a doctor's appointment. That's just Monday.

Domino is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day