Day 4076

Things got done today. We had a hearty breakfast and then I chopped the ice out of the driveway so we could get the cars out. I was expecting empty grocery stores from what I'd been hearing on the news, but it looked like most stores spent the night restocking things. The shelves were full and I found everything on my list. Even bottled water was abundant which might be because Dallas wasn't one of the cities with a "boil water" notice. For the most part, the roads were completely clear. I thought that my tire pressure would increase because it was warmer today, but that didn't appear to be the case. I'm still getting a warning light on the dash. The tires didn't look or feel low, so I'll deal with pumping them up later.

Amazingly, the pumps on the roof still worked and I was able to pump away a lot of very cold water. I won't attempt to climb up on the roof and remove the rest of the water until all the ice is gone. I'm not that stupid. We've had no problems with frozen pipes. Even the outdoor faucets seem OK. I think the outdoor faucets survived because they're so old that they all drip naturally. Most of them I can't turn completely off anymore.

We were worried that Dawn wouldn't want to go outside, but she seemed eager for a walk. She hopped and jumped through the remaining snow and had a great time smelling everything. She remembered her old route and was ready to return home after she completed her short one mile journey. Since it was a nice day, I continued walking and though I would attempt my old six mile route. This was a mistake without my good shoes. This was the slowest six miles I've ever walked and my feet started hurting almost immediately. I needed the heavy boots because there were still a lot of slushy areas, but I don't think my feet will ever forgive me.

The lake has already thawed quite a bit. I wouldn't be surprised if all the ice was gone tomorrow. Pretty soon this cold spell will just be a memory. In a few years I'll wonder whether this was worse than other big storms we've had in the past. We've certainly had more snow, but I don't ever remember it being so cold for this long. I'm so glad we didn't lose power. We lost power for five days during an ice storm a decade ago and it was miserable. You should never take electricity for granted. I have a feeling that there are a lot of people who are going to be looking into whole home generators after all this is over. Every time we've had a sustained power outage, I've thought about a whole home generator. We still don't have one because they can be quite expensive and to be practical, you'd need one that runs on natural gas and can be easily isolated from the grid for safety reasons.

The reason we don't have a whole home generator is probably the same reason the Texas power grid hasn't been winterized properly. It's expensive and complicated to do things right. It's much easier to just kick the can down the road and hope for the best. If we did things right, I should have cut down the aging large Oak trees in the back yard, moved our driveway and entrance to the back, and put a sloping roof on the house. Sadly, it would be easier to just move.

I wonder how long it will be before the next catastrophe makes us forget about the big freeze of 2021? Jeez. 2021 is already worse than 2020 and it's only February. I'd like to be optimistic, but I'm not. We live in an interdependent world where everything has become too big to fail. Someone eats the wrong bat in China and the entire world faces a deadly pandemic. Someone fails to anticipate a cold winter and the entire power grid almost goes down. You really wonder what is going to happen next. 

Odie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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