Ayuh, builds character...but I thought I was enough of a character already!

Power came back on at 4:15 -- yeehah!

Six days (and nights, fer-pete's-sake) without electricity, phone, running water, Mudcat!, etcet.

We actually fared better than most people without power -- we normally heat with wood, so not having the furnace available wasn't a hardship and we were comfortably warm and Tom could cook up an incredible venison stew on Sunday utilizing the venison steaks and some nice sausage that otherwise would have been lost in the warming freezer. I used the last of the water (that I'd been carefully husbanding) in the holding tank to wash my hair on Sunday, so have been completely dependent on storebought gallons of water since. Since we have a composting toilet, we didn't have to worry about water for flushing.

Coffee was a problem for Tom, of course, and the only real crisis was when he discovered Saturday morning that in the low light of the generator-provided electricity at Market Basket on Friday, he'd inadvertently picked up DE-CAF coffee bags instead of the real thing.

We had a TracFone since the end of September, so had emergency phone contact, too, so the situation was never dire and just annoying.

Couldn't get to work on Friday thanks to downed branches and wires in the driveway, and when Tom got out later (turned out to be Comcast line disconnected from the pole in the driveway), no gas station for miles around had power so couldn't fill my car's tank. Went to Pizza Spinners early in the evening -- they were running on generator. It was like the bar scene in "Star Wars" while waiting for our pizza in the heatless but heavily populated shop.

Lee Circle got power restored by 11:30 Friday night, so I got real coffee bags for Tom on m way to work, then fed gas to the car on the other side of the circle and finally made it full circle to McDonald's for breakfast on my way to work. Fox Run Mall (I work at Sears Optical) never lost power, but Optical's direct line is the first to come up when anyone calls Directory Assistance, so spent the day telling people calling to find out if Sears had generators that they'd have to call the Sears number.

My boss never lost power, either, but most of New Hampshire did and most of those within many miles of Fox Run were at Sears looking for generators. (They sure as heck weren't looking to buy eyeglasses!)

Another good thing that came out of it is we discovered that a nearby seafood restaurant has GREAT (and reasonably priced) breakfasts.

But it's really nice to be almost back to "normal" -- it's fatiguing to read by flashlight and get ready for work with jug water and low light, etc.

Later!
Linn