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12/16/2006 Entry: "Power is Back"

As you may have heard, we've had some weather around here lately! I had to drive to SeaTac airport Thursday evening to pick Jack up on his return from a business trip to Austria. Gah! The rain was the heaviest I've seen in many a year. It didn't let up until I was parked in the cell phone parking lot and could unclench my hands from the steering wheel. I drove home (Jack nodding off beside me) after a good dinner with our friends Jim Kling and Ivy Yap -- they were spending the night at a motel near the airport because they had an early flight the next morning.

The gusts were building up by the time we got home, and there were a few power blinks before I went to bed so I turning off everything I could find. We did wake up when the power went off for the duration because Grandson R didn't like being in a pitch black room, and the UPS was beeping insistently downstairs. We all managed to get back to sleep.

In the morning, Jack had some connectivity on his cell phone and learned his office building had power, indeed had never lost it. So he decided to try to get to work (his van was still there anyway in the garage). We failed to taked into account that the 520 bridge was blocked due to the windstorm, so anyone driving to Seattle had to get off that road and take 405 through Bellevue to I-90! So even beyond the traffic lights that had to be negotiated like four way stops (I mean, four-way-stops filled with idiots!) we were in bumper to bumper traffic for over an hour. When we got to his building, about half the employees were there, but there was work for Jack to do so he decided to stay. I drove home in about twenty minutes -- all the traffic was going the other way!

Grandson R and I took a good walk in the Microsoft woods. I lit a bunch of candles before Jack got home. He stopped at our storage unit and got the camp stove, bottled gas, catalytic heater, and his favorite camping accessory: little oil-candles we got at a Restaurant supply place that are better and safer than my scented votives. He had a long drive home because he was looking for a gas station with power to buy gas for the generator! When he got home we heated up some chili out of the freezer, then Jack played guitar. Both R and the grownups had an early night.

Our power came on in the middle of the night! But cable is still out, thus cable internet is out. We ventured to downtown Redmond to look for WiFi, and found it at Panera. These kind folks let us use their internet even thought they are serving no food (baking has to start in the middle of the night before). Yay, Panera!

Posted by Ram @ 12/19/2006 12:09 AM PST