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Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Lights Out

I've been meaning to post for almost 2 days. Surely, I thought, I would not be writing this tonight. All the problems will have been fixed by now, and I won't get a chance to discuss it.

But here we are, Wednesday night, and much of the city of Columbus, Ohio is still without power. For those not living in Ohio or the general area, Hurricane Ike was still pretty pissed off when he came to call on our calm state. Ike was still a Category I Tropical Storm with 75-mile-an-hour winds Sunday night when he ripped through the state, especially Central Ohio, with a vengeance. The "remnants" caused over half a million in Columbus and surrounding suburbs to lose electricity, with damage still being assessed.

We were lucky. We only lost power from around 7 PM or so Sunday night to 5 PM on Monday. We only lost the contents of our fridge (which needed to be cleaned out in a bad way anyway); most of our meat and veggies stayed frozen in the back of the freezer, and we're able to cook what didn't. We were able to do laundry, take showers, and hang out at my parents' house (where they only lost power for maybe 20 minutes while AEP was hooking things back up) for awhile. The power outages meant the JCC was closed on Monday, and I didn't have to work; Brandon doesn't have class until tomorrow morning (and my mom is still off work tomorrow from teaching at Columbus Public Schools), so we didn't need to find a new babysitter this week -- my dad is recovering from foot surgery.

My friend's family got power back on yesterday afternoon, and my father-in-law still does not have working cable or internet in Cincinnati, even though his electricity has come back on. We're all lucky that the wind didn't cause any major damage to our cars or homes -- my parents lost a few shingles, and the porch swing tried to leave, but other than that, everything held down pretty well.

Some are not so lucky. Because the hurricane hit Texas so hard, many of our electric crews were sent there to help out. Not that Texas doesn't need them, but they never anticipated being needed back home to return power to much of the city. I keep hearing at work how other teachers recently spent $100 to $200 on groceries Saturday or Sunday, just to have it all go bad in their refrigerator or freezer.

Folks, this is not a religious blog, by any means. In fact, I've been aiming to keep just about anything religious out of this blog -- maybe I'll create another one for thoughts on spirituality. There are so many other things that need discussion on this one. But whether you're religious or spiritual or ambivalent, please take thirty seconds to send out a prayer, a thought, positive energy or just some good ju-ju to anyone affected by Ike.

I'll be sending my own good thoughts to all of you who are still patiently waiting for life to return to something approaching normal. Good luck!

2 comments:

Amanda

The whole power thing was just nuts. Our cable finally started working again yesterday, but the whole time the phone and internet worked....but we get a good chunk off our Insight bill this month...lol. I am so grateful that we have electricity back...having my mom hold a flashlight over my head so I could dry my hair was not my idea of a fun morning!

Mel

Good to hear about the Insight bill. I completely forgot about getting together this week -- I've been super tired. I'll call you when I get off work tonight.

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