Despite the relatively minor (compared to what they experienced further north) impacts of the storm, we still have our own hurricane horror story to tell. Mid-morning we had an instantaneous power blip - just enough to knock us (Michael was working from home as well, since his office was closed) offline. Very frustrating to have to connect to the network again. We had hoped that would be our only complication but at 5:20 pm, BOOM, it went out again - and stayed out. I quickly saved my work (thank goodness my work computer is a laptop so still had some juice to allow me to not lose all I'd work on. I'd been good about saving all day, but still, it had been about an hour from the last save so there would have been a decent amount of work I would have had to recreate) and we scrounged up our candles and flashlights.
Unfortunately, I had a bone-in turkey breast roasting in the oven and it sill had at least 30 minutes to go. We left it the oven for another 1.5+ hours, hoping the residual heat would be enough to finish it off. We went ahead and shaved off the outer portions for dinner, figuring those were sure to be cooked. After our romantic candlelight dinner, I carved off the rest of the meat, stuck it in a cooler and tossed it outside. It was forecast to drop to the mid-high 30's overnight, so I hoped that was sufficient to keep it cool. No way I was opening the refrigerator to stick warm food in it!
The power didn't come on all evening, so we enjoyed some cribbage by candlelight - Michael won both games. I blame it on the adverse conditions! We bundled Buzzard up (put towels on his cage) and made an early night of it. I don't think we've gone to bed this early the entire time we've been married!
The power came back on at 4:30 am this morning. The refrigerator showed that it had risen to 48 deg F so I decided to toss all the dairy (glass of milk, and a little bit of sour cream and yogurt) but the freezer was only 8 deg F and none of the food appeared to be defrosted, so I let that stay. We brought the turkey in when we got up this morning and it seemed fine as well. We had it for lunch today (after a good nuking in microwave) and we haven't thrown up yet, so I think our experiment was a success! ;-)
So, not a complete bed of roses, but far less worse than it could have been. We are very grateful for the relatively minor damage we received and are praying for our neighbors to the north. Hope you will do the same!
In closing, here's a pic I took around 6:00 pm last night, after our power had gone out. Apparently, the USPS was determined to live up to their (unofficial) motto!
No comments:
Post a Comment