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The Way Life Should Be
Maine's tag-line is: Maine: The way life should be
In case you didn't know that.
As I may have mentioned here once or twice, I like living in Maine, and anticipate no necessity in future to shift to, say, Florida. Or Arizona. Or any of those other Warm Places with Interesting Weather of their own.
Maine's Interesting Weather usually happens in the winter. I think this is a serious error in planning. Maine should schedule its Interesting Weather in the summer time, when the tourists can enjoy it, and when the Interesting Results of the Interesting Weather can be contained by Seasonal Weather.
An ice storm in July would be just the thing, providing welcome relief from what we like to call "heat"; a deftly timed power outage would impart the thrill of being alone in the achingly cold dark, tempered by the knowledge that the next day would dawn bright and hot, melting the ice in time for everyone to enjoy a noon swim.
I appeal to the Maine Department of Tourism to look into this slight change of schedule. It could bring Million$ into the state's tourism efforts.
Back here at the Old Schedule, we had an ice storm Saturday through Sunday and into Monday afternoon. We briefly lost power on Monday morning, but it came back, lulling us into a sense of false security, until it went out with a vengeance in the small hours of Tuesday morning.
And it remained out.
After a breakfast of tuna fish on rolls, with hot tea (eating off the shelves, you know), we went outside, where it was 23F-feels-like-16F, and worked up a sweat chipping the cars free of their icy sarcophagi.
We came back inside, had another cup of hot tea, and a cookie and discussed whether we should start the wood stove. The problem being that the woodstove and the oil furnace share the same flue. Meaning that, if the power came back on soon -- as was our devout wish -- we'd need to turn it off until the woodstove had finished its burn. We have an 18-hour woodstove.
In the end, we decided to play the old Who Cares About The House, We're Going To Town card, and see if that brought the power back.
So, we went to town and picked up the mail (Christmas cards! A check for our share of an anthology sale to Audible! My limited edition Major Arcana deck of the Tarot of the Zirkus created and produced by Waterville's own Doug Thornsjo!) hit the various hardware stores to replace the snowmelt we'd used up, and to buy birdseed, then had dinner at the Weathervane before heading home, where we found that!
The power was still out.
It was now approaching 4:30 pm, and I was beginning to fear for the items in the fridge.
We lit the woodstove, with much help from the cats, took one of the back-up batteries down to the basement to power a light and recharge the cellphones, and sat by the side of the woodstove, reading.
Until the power came back on, around...7:30?
Steve took advice on the internet, but it was as we had supposed; we turned off the furnace and repaired upstairs to have dinner and, eventually, to bed. With extra blankets. And coon cats.
It was Quite Chilly this morning when we got up. The fire had burned down to a nice even ash, and the furnace has been brought back into play.
I've downloaded the Federal Government's lists of what food items are safe to keep after an extended time without power, and which must be thrown away, and after breakfast -- I'm thinking grilled cheese sandwiches, here, since the eggs are unsafe -- I'll spend some time cleaning out the fridge. On the one hand, it's good we weren't planning a Feast and lost a families-worth of holiday dinner. On the other hand, the fridge wasn't exactly empty.
Today, it's bright and sunny, though very, very cold (8F/-13C feels-like-minus 6F/minus 21C). And I am extremely happy to have the furnace running, and the lights on.
To those who celebrate: Merry Christmas.
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Your eggs, if they have been properly kept and are less than a month old, are still safe. I discovered - to my naive horror - that some people in some countries don't refrigerate eggs at all. Never refrigerated eggs are good for a week, give or take. Refrigerated eggs can be good to ten weeks. ... The things I've learned since I got chickens...
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My point here is to clarify the above comments. UNWASHED eggs are often kept without refrigeration. In California, eggs are washed before sale, so are best kept in the frig. I don't know the Maine policy. But in any case, there is a float test in salted water you can use to determine if they have gone off - and the old sniff test of each individual egg after cracking, is also valid. Enjoy the day and a Merry Christmas to all so inclined!
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OTOH, if your refrigerator was kept closed, and was working well beforehand, I wouldn't worry too much about 12-18 hours without power. All bets are off if you were in and out of the fridge, tho'. I'm another person who uses the "auxilliary fridge" - the attached garage. The two cars parked have kept the temperature in there consistently in the 32-38F range, with our outside temps maxing out in the 20's at best in the last 3-4 weeks (and quite a lot of that time in single digits or lower). Nothing there has frozen, yet :-) Frozen items would go out on the north side of the house packed in snow/ice, if needed. In a pinch, bowls of that snow/ice stuck in the fridge would help keep it cool longer (or keep bottles of ice in the freezer for transfer to the fridge when the power goes out). A refrigerator thermometer is nice to have on hand if your outages happen on a semi-regular basis.
Nah, can't tell I've lived in an area with semi-regular power cuts :-) I have to say, from a standpoint of dealing with a power outage, with proper prep, I'd rather an outage in the winter than in the summer. I can generate heat better than cool down :-)
Maine weather
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Stay Warm
I echo the wishes to keeping power up and staying warm. Best wishes for a happy Christmas and a healthy and prosperous New Year.
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