Candles Old and New

Power went out here yesterday at noon due to the heavy hoarfrost we have had for days.
Sure reminds you how dependent you are on electricity, for what can you do indoors without it?
Read and sleep.
Can't do dishes, cook, bath, laundry.
No computer, no internet, no tv.

Estimated time of restoration was 8pm. By 9 o'clock I had added to my regular ensemble a pair of ski pants, two sweaters and a tuque.

Scott and his brother had gotten a generator going, heated up the big old house in the other farmyard (a mile down the road, where his mother lives, also his brother's family), then wired our furnace up to the generator long enough to heat up our house and once more return the generator to the other house to heat it again for the night.

Scott made a trip to town to bring Everett out here; the lad had left work at 2 o'clock when all the businesses shut down because none of the debit machines worked without power. He lives in an old storey-and-a-half and had been in bed to keep warm.

Emil complained all day: "I sure wish the power would come on."

It came on about midnight after being out all over the province, or at least in a very long list of places.

I was impressed watching Scott do all that re-wiring, or whatever it was he did with those plugs and wires in order to hook the furnace up to the generator. "Is there anything that man cannot do?" I was certainly thinking that, as I wondered how other people— those without Scotts, woodstoves, fireplaces, generators— were faring around the countryside and in the towns.

Candles were our heat for some 10 or 11 hours yesterday, until we all went to bed.