Catching Up for Lost Time

It's been almost a whole month since I last posted. Fortunately, I have some very good excuses, and also some cute little stories...but I'll get to those as I go. First, the last post was on September 8th. I had planned to post on September 14th--had some really interesting things to say about Auburn's anemic 3-2 win over Mississippi State. The game was so boring, so painful to watch, that even Bode gave up midway through the third quarter.
Fortunately, Auburn was able to eke out a win. Much the same can be said about Auburn's win over Tennessee, but I'm getting ahead of myself...

So like I said, I was planning on posting the Sunday following the Auburn-Mississippi State hockey, err, football game. However, Hurricane Ike intervened. Ashley thought Ohio would be immune to the effects of hurricanes (other than the gas-price gauging that accompanies them nowadays). She was mistaken, because on the 14th of September, a massive wind storm, the remnants of Ike, engulfed the Miami Valley. Sustained winds reached 70+ mph, and I'm sure there had to have been some much stronger gusts. We lost power at 2:30 pm; it did not come back on for ten days (yes, days. Not hours. Days.). We were very lucky in that we didn't suffer any damage to our house. We had a lot of tree limbs down, but nothing hit our house. We had neighbors that lost two huge trees in their back yard. The trees fell onto their back porch--a couple feet to the right and they would have been in serious trouble.

So, how does one cope with no power for ten days? You make due. Initially, it was kind of cute. It was like a camping trip, except with indoor plumbing and soft mattresses. We listened to football games on the radio and since we have a gas stove, we could cook. Obviously the fridge was lost, but we were able to get ice in a cooler so we could have cold drinks. As the week crept on, we started to hear things. Dayton Power and Light (DP&L) gave initial estimates that everyone would have power restored by the weekend (over 300,000 in Dayton alone lost power). This changed to "the end of the weekend" and then to 95% and then 90% of all customers having power by Sunday night. This created a huge problem, because the Auburn-LSU game was on Saturday night at 7:45 pm. "Oh, we'll have power by then," I assured Ashley on Wednesday. Slowly, houses started getting power back until our whole neighborhood had it...except our street. One of our neighbors works for DP&L and said the feeder lines that service our houses are still down. Unfortunately, this equated to only about 50 houses, so we would likely be in that 10% that wouldn't have power back Sunday night. People on our street began to get a little feisty although most were maintaining there sense of humor. Bode seemed immune to the power outage, although he probably did wonder why we were waking him up with a big flash-light in his eyes. The first time waking him up with the flashlight and saying, "You been drinking, son?" was funny. It lost a little bit of its humor on day 5.

The biggest issue (sadly) was the Auburn-LSU game. We couldn't really take Bode to the bar and watch the game. We'd be out until at least 11:30 pm or so, and we didn't want to mess with his sleep schedule. Nor could get someone to watch the little Dude--"Can you come sit in our dark house while Bode sleeps so we can go watch a football game?" didn't really sound like a good way to recruit a sitter. Thus, Ashley was resigned to "watching" the game on the radio. Fortunately, Ashley married someone that really loves her and vowed to move heaven and earth to let her see the game. I saw that our friends a couple streets over had power. We have four or five extension cords in our garage, and our neighbors have a lot of extension cords which weren't being used. I gathered up about 500 feet of cord, trekked through some backyards and across the street, and showed up at Emily's and Tony's with a three-pronged outlet in hand. "We'll only run the TV," I promised. After they finished laughing, they were glad to help, and we were able to see the game, which Auburn lost...so thanks to me, Ashley was able to see her beloved Tigers lose. I guess I shouldn't pat myself on the back too hard, huh?

The Sunday after the Auburn-LSU game (the 21st of September), I left for Pamplona, Spain. I'll document that trip in a future post. Ashley and Bode pressed on without power until Wednesday the 24th and things returned to normal. I got back late on Saturday--managed to see the Auburn-Tennessee game in the airport in Philadelphia. The trip was fine, except I didn't realize Montezuma's brother, Enrique, was from Spain and he's just as evil (which is why I'm writing this Monday morning from home, staying a safe distance from the bathroom at all times.)

Pleasant day.