Power Off, Power On, Life Goes Onwards

We finally got our power back after almost 24 hours. I suppose it could have been worse, but we're still working through the food, figuring out what needs to be tossed and what survived (barely). We did buy ice and put most of the refrigerator "must save" items in a cooler, but that was probably too late to actually save most of them. We should have done it right away. 

We have at least eight Coleman coolers, most more modern
than this one. This Coleman ice chest dates from the 1960's.
We took the food out of the cooler late Saturday night, and it
still has unmelted ice it in as of this morning. If I have
time I'll try to get it emptied today, but carrying it is really
a two-person job. 

I think the most frustrating thing was continuing to go onto the "Lights Out" section of my utility, see that I was identified on there, but get absolutely no time frame for when we might have a repair. DH was quite frustrated, and I was quite grateful that I was at work. Most of my friends in the area were unaffected by the storm - a storm that spawned quite a few tornadoes and hit the Twin Cities with straight-line winds in excess of 70 mph. Unfortunately, when we get winds like that in my area, more often than not, we get blown transformers. This time it was down the line from us - but still affected the area in general. 

The electrical lines in my neighborhood go through
a lot of tree branches, so in a stiff wind, we often
will have power issues down the lines. Usually
these aren't city wide, though. On Saturday we
were one of more than 55,000 houses and high-rise
apartments in the Metro Area that had lost power. 

Around mid-day, DH heard a series of clicks, followed by three concentrated explosions. He assumed that the power company tried something and three transformers blew, one right after another. I suppose that's possible, I wasn't there so can't weigh in on the accuracy of his assumption. 

But, 23 hours after we had lost power, we finally had light on once again. What a relief! On Sunday we continued work on the woodshed. I'll share some photos tomorrow. I hope all of you had a wonderful weekend and I'll be back tomorrow.