Day 3456

This is our third day without power. There is still no estimate for power restoration in our neighborhood, but we're starting to see power company trucks, so that's a good sign. I talked to a crew from Alabama this morning who were looking for downed lines behind our house. I've seen repair crews from Mississippi, Alabama, and Oklahoma so far. This is a major effort. Lots of people in the Northern part of town already have power again, but our neighborhood is almost always the last to get electricity. We have the most trees and consequentially the most downed lines. The repair crews need to be really careful with all these downed lines. I heard that they missed one yesterday and started a house fire when they tried to turn the power back on.

One of the guys from Alabama told me that they may get our power restored later tonight. I hope so. We've almost run out of clean towels and I may need to go to the laundromat tomorrow. My little generator definitely won't run the washing machine. Actually, I've been very pleased with the little generator. Technically it's called an inverter and delivers much cleaner electricity than a traditional generator. When I bought it I just wanted something to run the computers. I'm discovering that it will power quite a few other things as well. The small refrigerator runs fine using the generator. Janet was able to use her hair dryer as well. I was even able to fire up the Keurig machine this morning and make myself some coffee. The generator will run all day on two gallons of gas. That's pretty good if you ask me.

I discovered that my solar powered generator doesn't do so well on cloudy days. There wasn't enough sunlight today to use the solar panels to recharge the batteries. Gasoline came to the rescue though. I used my gas powered generator to recharge the solar generator. A lot of people drive Teslas in Dallas. I wonder how those people feel now. They are dead in the water for the time being. Their car batteries have run down and most of the charging stations in Dallas are dead. I haven't seen a single Tesla on the road for the past three days.

The best thing that happened today was that my tree guy came over and removed all the dangerous dangling limbs from the elm tree that got damaged. I was one of the lucky ones who got tree service in two days. A lot of people are still waiting. We discovered that a more of our tree had fallen in our neighbor's yard than we initially thought. Luckily neither of us had much damage to our houses. I did lose the greenhouse though. The tree crew will have to come back later to remove what's left of the elm tree. They are only doing emergency service right now and had two more jobs today after they finished with my tree. For now, everyone in the city is just dragging their downed tree limbs to the curb. I have no idea how long it's going to take the city to clean this mess up. There are huge piles of ruined trees everywhere. It's a shame to see so many mature trees destroyed in the neighborhood. These old growth trees were one of the things that made this part of town special.

Apparently yard work is better exercise than going to the gym. I haven't taken a long walk since the storm roared through town, and I'm still burning more calories and taking more steps than I was before. When you spend most of the day hauling logs and big tree limbs out to the street, you end up doing a lot of walking. By the end of the day, I'm tired. I thought this would help me sleep, but so far it isn't working. It feels stuffy in the house without the air conditioner running. It's also too quiet. I'm used to the sound of the dehumidifier running constantly and usually we keep the fan running on the HVAC system so there is some air circulating in the house.

I'm still sitting in the dark, but I saw a large power company truck one street over from ours just before sunset. That's a good sign. Hopefully, when you hear from me tomorrow, we'll have electricity again.

Willa is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2511

I'm not catching many breaks with this roof. When I went up on the roof to inspect what the repair crews did yesterday, I was simultaneously pleased and disappointed. It looked like the crew had applied the elastomer coating properly, but there was one big problem. It was a windy day yesterday and tons of small leaves had fallen from our Elm Tree and become embedded in the coating before it had time to dry properly. Now the leaves are probably going to be there forever. If I try too hard to rip them out, I could damage the coating. If I ignore the leaves and leave them where they are, they could react chemically with the coating and cause it to deteriorate prematurely. For over 30 years nature has been trying to tell me that nobody should have built a house on this property. The large trees are pretty but the root systems have penetrated our sewer lines, large tree branches have broken off in storms and landed on the roof, and squirrels have claimed the entire area as their own. I think I lost this battle years ago, but it is still discouraging to be reminded about how relentless the natural world can be about reclaiming what it rightfully owns. The forest will be here long after the house is gone.

Security concerns have forced me to have so many passwords that I can't even begin to remember them all. I felt foolish when I couldn't even remember how to add my existing e-mail account to my new iPad. The hosting company had forced me to start using a new more complex password recently and all I could remember was the original one. I ended up having to call tech support and asked them to guide me through the process. This was embarrassing, since I routinely help other people set up their e-mail accounts for a living. Almost every day something like this happens to remind me that I'm not getting any younger. At any rate, when I finally got the e-mail account working, I set it to remember my log-in information, so I won't have to go through this again.

I saw some Kestrels on my walk with Dash this afternoon. These little hawks appear to be thriving in our area. I see more of them every year. They usually sit on the top of trees looking intently for something to eat. I don't have the patience to be a serious birder, but I do enjoy learning a little more about the animals I see everyday. It's an eat or be eaten world out there. Perhaps if we humans weren't at the top of the food chain, we'd be a little more realistic about our place in the world. Hawks know what to do. All animals know instinctively how to keep things in balance, except for us. We seem to think we're exempt from the cycle of life and I'm convinced that this will lead to our extinction.

I wonder if there is anything that would actually change people's minds in this election. Trump supporters aren't swayed by his frequent displays of incompetence. Hillary supporters are even worse. They could care less about the implications of compromising national security or selling favors to the highest bidder. Politics have become like sports. Everyone is just rooting for their favorite team. I don't think this is going to end well, no matter who wins.

I'm old, so I don't think my life is going to change all that much. If I were young, I'd be worried. How did we let ourselves get to the point where the Kardashians have become role models and two self-centered idiots are running for president. What's scary is that one of these two is going to win.  Idiocracy is just a movie now, but in ten years it's going to seem like a documentary.

Dakota is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day