Thursday, January 28th Amarillo had about 10 inches of snow. That storm ended up turning into an icestorm by the time it reached Duncan that afternoon. We were dismissed from work at 3, to come home to now power. The power went off around lunch time. I made the miserable trip to wal-mart to look for candles and firewood....no luck, they were already sold out. I decided I'd drive up Hwy 81 to see if there were any other stores with generators that might have firewood. Orschelin's was open, but the don't sell wood. I guess they must have felt sorry for me though. They had a gator display in the store with the bed filled with firewood, and they said they'd give it to me. It seemed like a lot of wood when it was in my car, and it was enough to get us through the first night, which we spent sleeping on the floor in front of the fireplace.
Day2. We woke up cold and uncomfortable from sleeping on the floor. We were almost out of firewood again too. So we started burning our fence. The fence was wet so it wasn't the best, but it was able to get us by. I looked in the "Shopper" for ads for firewood. I was able to get a hold of one guy, his response..."We don't have any power so call me back in a few days." Stupid guy, couldn't get it through his head that I wanted the wood because we didn't have any power. We talked to Brice's brother, Bryan, and he told us about an ad on craigslist for 24 hour firewood delivery....I called the guy, apparently 24 hour, means within 24 hours, so we continued to burn out fence. That afternoon we were both uncomfortable from laying on the ground. So I got out our queen sized air mattress, and yes I blew that stupid thing up by mouth
Day 3: We reached the lowest temperature in the morning 46 and that was in the living room where the fire was! About noon we had the firewood delivered and then we were able to warm the living room up a few degrees. We got our hopes up on Saturday after we heard a press release from the mayor saying that power should be restored by 5:00pm....well that didn't happen. It made it worse anticipating the power coming back on
Sunday morning at 7:21am our power finally came back on! we wanted to throw a party we were so excited. It has been a week now and there are still a lot of people that don't have power. Some of our friends still didn't have power on Monday, and they were going to join us for a slumber party on Monday, but luckily their power came on a little while after they got home from work.
So what did we learn:
Keep lots of cheap candles around the house
We should probably consider buying a generator
We need to buy flashlights (we had two small ones) and keep batteries in stock
Get an oil lantern and have spare oil
Always keep a few metal hangers around...we roasted hotdogs over the fire
That our smoke alarm works...very well! (the vent on the fireplace closed during the night - so now our house smells like a campfire)
We had plenty of water since we always have 5 gallon jugs that we fill up since that is cheaper than buying bottled.
Bailey with a Christmas bow on her collar
My publication award....I had a patent application that was just filed too and another publication on the way
