We finally got hit with some of the power outages that have been happening here in the Pacific NW. Last nights winds toppled a couple HUGE trees near our street; taking out the power, cable, phone and the road.
When this happens at our place, we have come to the conclusion the biggest difficulty is Flushing. That's right. We are on a well, so without power, we are without water. Without water, the toilets are pretty much just for decoration. We did have our rain barrel with 50 gallons in it, so we were running out to the barrel and hauling water in to fill the toilet tanks. Lessons learned included.....it's better to fill the tank BEFORE you have to go..... 
We were out of power over 24 hours....felt very Little House on the Prairie-ish here.
With help, I got the generator up and running..........and yes, had it outside the house. (Seattle had multiple people die from having them indoors; although I can't imagine doing that, the noise alone would be too much for me!) Kept the food in the fridges and freezer at the proper temps....didn't run anything else off it this time. I discovered I need a different kind of plug in order to connect to the generator thingy that is wired into the house. Will pick up one of those this week...just to be ready for another outage.
Cooked on the wood stove.........fashioned "pans" from heavy duty foil, as I didn't want to put my good cookware on the stove. Did a variety of things, including soft tacos from leftovers.
When the power did come back on, the water started filling the toilet tanks........one of the best sounds of the day!!! I'm so grateful for automatic flushing toilets!!! What a treat....we were all way too excited about this!
Update on 2007 Goals (already!!!)
I did mail out the letters to the horse people, giving them 30+ days to move out
Have begun to do more research on going rate for boarding any animals.
And........amazingly, room mate person paid a chunk of cash towards her share of the rent. Woo Hoo.
A good day.........Lots of positive stuff amongst the people here today. Adversity does seem to bring people together. Lots of laughter re; the hauling water for the toilets...... Everyone was busy doing things requiring no power which was a nice change. All the Christmas decor got taken down and stored away, I got my bathroom painted and put back together.....and the week end boys got to pee on trees!! (saved a bunch of water hauling!!) They will have stories to tell their parents come Monday.
My Latest Luxury: Flushing!!!!!
January 7th, 2007 at 07:04 am
January 7th, 2007 at 11:47 am 1168170420
January 7th, 2007 at 05:03 pm 1168189434
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