Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Snowtober: Part II

We just passed the 87 hour mark without electricity.  Outages statewide are down to 44% (544,908 households) and in our town, we are hovering right around the 50% mark, which is significant progress.  Despite the cold nights (in the 20's every night since the storm), the daytime temperatures have been around 50 so the house is still relatively warm.  This morning, we briefly dipped below 50, but with some help from our propane fireplace, we climbed back up to 50.2 before I left for work.  At this time, CL&P estimates that our electricity will be restored by late Sunday evening, but Lee and I are optimistic that we will have it by late Friday night.  I'm not sure why Friday is the magic day in our minds, but it is - and hopefully we will not be disappointed.  Despite the fact that the number of outages was and continues to be far greater than Hurricane Irene, there are fewer crews working on restoration.  It seems that CL&P may have failed to pay invoices from Irene; and that crews that were promised per diem for working 16 hour shifts during Irene were cut off at 15 hours.  Needless to say, out-of-state utility companies are not rushing to send aid to us this time around.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the coming months.
The girls continue to be in great spirits, which is simply amazing to us.  They struggle a bit in the morning, so we've been taking them out to breakfast, bringing them to work for a few hours, little things to get them out of the house for an hour or so  The rest of the day, they do pretty well.  Today, Lee is taking them to the mall and tomorrow, he will take them to the movies.  It's little wonder that they think that losing power is so great!  Last night, Lee was pretty industrious, cooking chicken and rice on the grill (wearing my headlamp, of course).  Please keep your fingers crossed that we get our electricity back soon!

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