I Need Power!

Greetings from Syracuse, NY.

On Friday, February 17, a massive windstorm blew through upstate New York and at noon, my power went out. And stayed out. And continued to stay out. National Grid (formerly Niagara Mohawk) said more than 205,000 customers had been affected and that for those in the Saratoga region, power would probably not be restored until Saturday night, possibly even Sunday night. Oy.

So I took a trip into town in the afternoon and the damage was extensive. Route 50 (the main thoroughfare from my house to town) was closed becuse trees had come down, requiring my taking a circuitous (and heavily congested) route. (In the State Park, a park worker was killed when a pine tree fell and crushed the cab of the truck he was sitting in.) No traffic lights were working. The only businesses in town that had any power were the ones that had their own generators--which was basically Price Chopper and Lowe's and that's it. Traffic was a nightmare but, to everyone's credit, they behaved courteously (though are are always a few self-important dickweeds in a hurry.) Last night, a friend came over and, hearing there was power in Clifton Park, we headed down there to find food.

Naturally, no power means no heat, and as Friday night went on I watched the thermostat in the house fall. When I got up this morning, it was 45 degrees in the house. Happily, this was the weekend that we had tickets to a Syracuse basketball game--because, given that temps were supposed to be in the single digits tonight, I did not relish the thought of another heatless night.

So hopefully the power will be back when I return Sunday afternoon, and that my pipes will not have frozen and burst.

According to the meteorologists, the fierce wind was the result of the balmy, spring-like weather we had last week colliding head on with an Arctic cold front swooping in. Or, as they kept saying on the radio, this was our payment for the nice weather.

And you know (Mr. Radio Station Programmer), it would be nice to be able to turn on the local news radio station and actually hear news about what is going on in the area and not Rush Limbaugh droning about whatever idiocy he usually drones on about.

All this is to say, I may be hard to reach for the next couple of days.

However, score one for "offline media." Nothing else may have worked, but printed books worked fine, and I got to spend a pleasant afternoon yesterday reading.