This year, Sandpoint’s Winter Carnival runs from January 12-15. The theme is For the Love of Snow, which is really only appropriate for those of us at the higher elevations. This week, Sandpoint (the town) has mostly experienced the Love of Rain.
But up here at 3,000 feet, we’ve had lots of snow and little electricity. Big sloppy, heavy snow takes out the trees, which in turn take out the power lines. I’m sure all the folks at Northern Lights and Avista have had a long week.
At our house, we logged a total of about 48 hours without power. On Monday, it went out for a couple of hours, but came back on. Then in the wee hours of Tuesday morning it went out and we didn’t get it back until Wednesday night at about 9 pm (43 hours). After a fabulous shower Thursday morning, I uttered many expletives when it went out again at noon. Fortunately, it came back on about three hours later.
Like almost everyone else in our neighborhood, we have a backup generator, since we have extended power outages like this at least once a year. Unfortunately, our generator only has enough juice to power some of our house. We mostly use it for our computers so we can get work done. The main thing it does NOT power is our well.
As a result, during power outages I’ve found that your priorities change. Cleanliness is the first casualty of a power outage. Not only do you forgo showers, but you also avoid using any unnecessary dishes or utensils, much less washing dishes or cleaning counters, and so forth. Our kitchen looked like it had been struck by the Dirty Dish Fairy and our table was littered with candles, wax, and other alternative lighting detritus.
As James pointed out this morning, the Dark Ages was probably really the Dirty Ages. After seeing what happened to our house in just a matter of hours, I tend to think he’s right.