Funny, hubby and I finally just got around to watching the latest Indiana Jones movie a couple nights ago! We had wanted to see it in the theater but never got around to it (we were in Europe for a month this summer and didn't want to watch it there). Anyway, we liked but didn't love it. And it was LONG! I was dozing a bit at the end, I have to admit. It was good and sweet at the end I think.
Our power goes out for days at a time sometimes, and when the weather is very cold and very hot. We have a small generator for major appliances. Our neighbors have a whole house generator and it is aggravating to watch while we shiver away or sweat it out. One time we lost power for 11 days. And it was near or over 100 degrees every day. I left and went to my parents' at the time. Hubby had to stay and hold down the fort. That was extreme. Nothing quite that long since, but sometimes it's days. We've stayed in a hotel for warmth. Still can't convince him to spring for the whole-house deal. It is very very expensive!
I know. It's gotten better, though. They've buried some of the lines. Now we generally just have a few hours or 1/2 day with no power so it's doable. Trust me, I threatened to move after the 11 day ordeal!
I have heard nothing but good things about that movie and already told my wife we need to watch it. The only downside is our to-be-watched pile is quite long.
My family seems to handle the lack of power somewhat similarly to yours. The first thing my mum does when the power is off is to call the electricity company's hot to check whether they know anything about it (what's the reason, was it planned, for how long we won't be having it etc.), while my dad is checking the fuses (sometimes what causes the electricity to go off is our oven or older iron, but once we were out of power for a whole weekend due to somebody leaving extension cord with exposed sockets, which caused damping it by the dew around). Meanwhile everybody else is checking how many rooms are out of electricity. That is because the power circuits are weirdly divided and there are times when the lights work but the sockets don't and vice versa.
Our substitute activities when there's no power are dependant on the time of day - when it's night, the best way to kill the time of waiting is to go to sleep, which is my usual way of handling it, or overthinking the embarrassing events from my life when I can't sleep. Others are usually sticking to their phones, trying to charge our dynamo-type flashlights or light the candles. When it's daytime, we fight the boredom by playing scrabble or doing chores (it's remarkable how sweet the housework becomes when there's nothing else to do).
Living on a hill ridge has this benefit I can see well which parts of my and neighbouring villages are out of power. This also means my family and direct neighbourhood experience the return of electricity several seconds later than others in the area, so we can observe how sequence-to-sequence the street lights are on closer and closer to us.
There's something poetic about looking down from your hilltop home to see who else is out of power. Way more efficient than my approach of wandering the neighborhood. I need a hill.
I went to the cinema for the newest Indiana Jones movie in July and I think it's decent - maybe not top notch, but a good send-off for a great character into his well-earned "retirement" and definitely better than predecessing part. But your decision was right - the way you have your date nights and the girls their evenings sounds way more pleasureable than forcing yourself to "tire out" the movie until its end.
Could be worse - you could live in TX, the only state that doesn’t share the national power grids. We now have a generator big enough to run our fridge, freezer, and pool equipment. 50+ hours without power when it was -10 deg and 6” of snow taught us a valuable lesson: you really don’t ever want to be without power EVER in TX. One would think summer would be okay, but when it’s 150 deg give or take during the day, you’re happy when it’s only 90 at 1 am.
For $20 You can get a hand crank generator on Amazon that is a flashlight/radio/phone charger. In a pre-apocolyptic urban or suburban area, that's pretty much all you need.
Isn't it worth having the generator to guarantee that your power will never go out again? I put in an all-electric heating system this year, so I'm considering it. Although, in years past, the oil furnace had no fans, so was only heating itself. I'd like to have a wood option as a heating backup and for the smell.
I like the idea of it, but we've lived here since 2008 and never lost power for more than an hour or two. It's a lot of money to pay for that extra protection.
Most of our power outages are on beautiful sunny days. Thankfully they are usually short lived. Even with the ice storm and Hurricane Ike (which impacted us all the way in Southern Indiana) only kept OUR power out for less than 24 hours. We do have some small backup power that is intended for camping so we can at least have charged cell phones - we aren't savages but would become that way if we didn't have internet for more than a few hours. We have been together for 23 years, we need a way to avoid each other. ;)
Had to laugh at the 23 yrs., hubby and I have been together 26, and he was talking about his retiring, if he ever really does, guess I will have to get a job, weekends are enough together time LOL
Ancient Greek time travel dial - yes. Crystal alien skull - no. Indiana Jones is an archaeologist, not a SETI researcher.
As to generators, we in the East often see news reports of dreadful blizzards in the MidWest so I think you should get one. I’m currently considering a solar-powered one - much less expensive and fewer siting issues. As to those handcranked radios, we’ll, I tried one once and it was exhausting!
Knock on wood, but it is very rare for us to lose power. Also, our next door neighbor is an elderly couple with oxygen needs, so the power company gets us online pretty fast.
I used to work for a power company here in Maryland. One day, my husband called me at work to say our power was out and could I ask my boss what was up? I could and did, and all he could tell me at the time was that it was affecting our whole neighborhood. We ended up going to my MIL's for dinner and while there, my boss called me. He asked me to describe my house and when I did, he said the origin of the outage that was affecting more than 200 houses originated at the transformer directly in front of our house! It wasn't anything we did, but it was still ironic.
My mom used to work for FEMA, so she's REALLY big into being prepared for natural disasters (not in a crazy Idaho way, though). Because of that, my parents have a generator the size of a chest freezer at their home in Virginia, and also two at the lake house in Wisconsin; those two are definitely useful.
I had to laugh at how to find dads during a tornado warning. There was a tornado years ago, that hit Saylor Park, Ohio and the warning was out for most all of Cincinnati, or at least in Mt. Washington, where my parents lived. I think I was maybe 10 or so, anyway, my dad and I were on the front porch trying to find the tornado, while my mom was laying in the empty bathtub, screaming at us to get in the house. I learned a lot from my dad, mostly to do with my mom, because when her screaming began to sound hysterical, he suggested we go in before she called child protective services on him LOL Fear is a wonderful thing as a parent, I know it probably kept me from doing a lot of bad things, not because I was afraid of jail, but because of the certain fact that my mom would kill me before I ever got in front of a judge.
I’m with your parents... we’ve had long power outages (although rarely more than a day), often in the winter. Every time, we discuss getting a generator, either for part or all of the house... and then we don’t have another power outage for a while, and the conversation drifts away... Knock on wood, we haven’t had one for more than an hour or two in several years. We can always see how widespread it is BEFORE we pull out the phone and check the electric company’s website, because we live at the top of a hill so can see the neighborhoods in multiple directions.
Funny, hubby and I finally just got around to watching the latest Indiana Jones movie a couple nights ago! We had wanted to see it in the theater but never got around to it (we were in Europe for a month this summer and didn't want to watch it there). Anyway, we liked but didn't love it. And it was LONG! I was dozing a bit at the end, I have to admit. It was good and sweet at the end I think.
Our power goes out for days at a time sometimes, and when the weather is very cold and very hot. We have a small generator for major appliances. Our neighbors have a whole house generator and it is aggravating to watch while we shiver away or sweat it out. One time we lost power for 11 days. And it was near or over 100 degrees every day. I left and went to my parents' at the time. Hubby had to stay and hold down the fort. That was extreme. Nothing quite that long since, but sometimes it's days. We've stayed in a hotel for warmth. Still can't convince him to spring for the whole-house deal. It is very very expensive!
Eleven days is insane. At that point, I don't think I'd go for the whole-house generator. I'd just move.
I know. It's gotten better, though. They've buried some of the lines. Now we generally just have a few hours or 1/2 day with no power so it's doable. Trust me, I threatened to move after the 11 day ordeal!
Our town has an outage map with estimated repair time listed. Does yours? We like it cause it's entertaining to note how inaccurate it is.
BtW, speaking of subtitles, you must watch Godzilla Minus One. I don't like subtitles,, but this movie was excellent .
I have heard nothing but good things about that movie and already told my wife we need to watch it. The only downside is our to-be-watched pile is quite long.
My family seems to handle the lack of power somewhat similarly to yours. The first thing my mum does when the power is off is to call the electricity company's hot to check whether they know anything about it (what's the reason, was it planned, for how long we won't be having it etc.), while my dad is checking the fuses (sometimes what causes the electricity to go off is our oven or older iron, but once we were out of power for a whole weekend due to somebody leaving extension cord with exposed sockets, which caused damping it by the dew around). Meanwhile everybody else is checking how many rooms are out of electricity. That is because the power circuits are weirdly divided and there are times when the lights work but the sockets don't and vice versa.
Our substitute activities when there's no power are dependant on the time of day - when it's night, the best way to kill the time of waiting is to go to sleep, which is my usual way of handling it, or overthinking the embarrassing events from my life when I can't sleep. Others are usually sticking to their phones, trying to charge our dynamo-type flashlights or light the candles. When it's daytime, we fight the boredom by playing scrabble or doing chores (it's remarkable how sweet the housework becomes when there's nothing else to do).
Living on a hill ridge has this benefit I can see well which parts of my and neighbouring villages are out of power. This also means my family and direct neighbourhood experience the return of electricity several seconds later than others in the area, so we can observe how sequence-to-sequence the street lights are on closer and closer to us.
There's something poetic about looking down from your hilltop home to see who else is out of power. Way more efficient than my approach of wandering the neighborhood. I need a hill.
I went to the cinema for the newest Indiana Jones movie in July and I think it's decent - maybe not top notch, but a good send-off for a great character into his well-earned "retirement" and definitely better than predecessing part. But your decision was right - the way you have your date nights and the girls their evenings sounds way more pleasureable than forcing yourself to "tire out" the movie until its end.
Could be worse - you could live in TX, the only state that doesn’t share the national power grids. We now have a generator big enough to run our fridge, freezer, and pool equipment. 50+ hours without power when it was -10 deg and 6” of snow taught us a valuable lesson: you really don’t ever want to be without power EVER in TX. One would think summer would be okay, but when it’s 150 deg give or take during the day, you’re happy when it’s only 90 at 1 am.
It was a pretty big news story years ago when Texas's grid went down. I can't blame you at all. I'd want a big generator, too.
Hard to believe we’re coming up on 3 years later!!!
For $20 You can get a hand crank generator on Amazon that is a flashlight/radio/phone charger. In a pre-apocolyptic urban or suburban area, that's pretty much all you need.
We used to have a hand crank flashlight, but I think it broke. The kids had too much fun cranking it.
Isn't it worth having the generator to guarantee that your power will never go out again? I put in an all-electric heating system this year, so I'm considering it. Although, in years past, the oil furnace had no fans, so was only heating itself. I'd like to have a wood option as a heating backup and for the smell.
I like the idea of it, but we've lived here since 2008 and never lost power for more than an hour or two. It's a lot of money to pay for that extra protection.
Most of our power outages are on beautiful sunny days. Thankfully they are usually short lived. Even with the ice storm and Hurricane Ike (which impacted us all the way in Southern Indiana) only kept OUR power out for less than 24 hours. We do have some small backup power that is intended for camping so we can at least have charged cell phones - we aren't savages but would become that way if we didn't have internet for more than a few hours. We have been together for 23 years, we need a way to avoid each other. ;)
Had to laugh at the 23 yrs., hubby and I have been together 26, and he was talking about his retiring, if he ever really does, guess I will have to get a job, weekends are enough together time LOL
Ancient Greek time travel dial - yes. Crystal alien skull - no. Indiana Jones is an archaeologist, not a SETI researcher.
As to generators, we in the East often see news reports of dreadful blizzards in the MidWest so I think you should get one. I’m currently considering a solar-powered one - much less expensive and fewer siting issues. As to those handcranked radios, we’ll, I tried one once and it was exhausting!
The alien one still strikes me as the most out of place, but not as out of place as CGI Harrison Ford on that train.
Knock on wood, but it is very rare for us to lose power. Also, our next door neighbor is an elderly couple with oxygen needs, so the power company gets us online pretty fast.
It's good that they stay on top of it. We've had pretty good luck with ours as well, but it's been a while since we've been hit hard by a storm.
I used to work for a power company here in Maryland. One day, my husband called me at work to say our power was out and could I ask my boss what was up? I could and did, and all he could tell me at the time was that it was affecting our whole neighborhood. We ended up going to my MIL's for dinner and while there, my boss called me. He asked me to describe my house and when I did, he said the origin of the outage that was affecting more than 200 houses originated at the transformer directly in front of our house! It wasn't anything we did, but it was still ironic.
My mom used to work for FEMA, so she's REALLY big into being prepared for natural disasters (not in a crazy Idaho way, though). Because of that, my parents have a generator the size of a chest freezer at their home in Virginia, and also two at the lake house in Wisconsin; those two are definitely useful.
I had to laugh at how to find dads during a tornado warning. There was a tornado years ago, that hit Saylor Park, Ohio and the warning was out for most all of Cincinnati, or at least in Mt. Washington, where my parents lived. I think I was maybe 10 or so, anyway, my dad and I were on the front porch trying to find the tornado, while my mom was laying in the empty bathtub, screaming at us to get in the house. I learned a lot from my dad, mostly to do with my mom, because when her screaming began to sound hysterical, he suggested we go in before she called child protective services on him LOL Fear is a wonderful thing as a parent, I know it probably kept me from doing a lot of bad things, not because I was afraid of jail, but because of the certain fact that my mom would kill me before I ever got in front of a judge.
I’m with your parents... we’ve had long power outages (although rarely more than a day), often in the winter. Every time, we discuss getting a generator, either for part or all of the house... and then we don’t have another power outage for a while, and the conversation drifts away... Knock on wood, we haven’t had one for more than an hour or two in several years. We can always see how widespread it is BEFORE we pull out the phone and check the electric company’s website, because we live at the top of a hill so can see the neighborhoods in multiple directions.