Laura Ingalls I am not

This morning at 6:30am I was rudely awakened ..... by the sound of silence.  The furnace turned off at the same time as my ocean-waves noisemaker, and I sat up and asked the obvious -- did the power go out?  Bob replied that yes in fact it had.  He suggested we go back to sleep since it was so early, and since there wasn't much we could do about it, which was a good idea. But I got paranoid about no one calling Ameren to let them know our power was out unless I got up and called them on my cell phone.


I wonder -- perhaps Ameren has an automated alarm system thing that let's them know when power is out, and they don't need us to call and tell them? I have no clue -- but just in case I got up, found my phone and called them.  


When a nice lady answered instead of an automated system, I was flummoxed for a moment, and then told her our power was out.  She apologized, asked for my address, asked if we heard a loud popping sound or saw a flash -- I said I had no clue, I was asleep.  Bob said no we didn't -- apparently he'd been awake, unable to sleep, for awhile.  (Actually both of us woke up around 1am this morning, unable to sleep, so we watched or DVR of "The Ricky Gervais Show," which made us laugh our butts off.  I was able to go back to sleep afterwards, but Bob was not and he told me later he was upstairs working on his Reflection until finally coming back to bed about 5am.  I had no clue.)


She said her computer show'd an outage for 26 customers in our area, she had no idea why.  We hung up and assumed power would be restored soon, since it usually is (and it wasn't windy or stormy or anything outside -- in fact it was sunny and pleasant with a mild breeze).  Since that brief encounter woke us up, we ended up getting out of bed, where I commenced to turn the light switch on in every room I entered out of habit. I was aimless and lost as soon as I realized I couldn't do what I aways do first thing every morning.  Yes, yes, I was able to pee, but I could not check email or Facebook.  So I went upstairs to make an early breakfast (earlier than we usually eat on Saturdays, we usually eat at 10am during "Wait Wait").  We have a gas stove, so I was confident I could make the usual Saturday bacon, eggs, and taters.  But the burners wouldn't light because the electricity that makes them spark was out.  So I lit them with a lighter and felt like a pioneer.


Then I got the eggs, etc. out of the fridge and realized we needed to limit our ins and outs of the fridge so the food wouldn't spoil.  Again, very pioneerish.  Additionally, I had to cook with only the light from outside, as of course the light over the stove did not work. And it only took me five minutes to realize why the toast was not toasting. Thank goodness it was sunny and not the gloom we'd been having all week, otherwise I'm sure there would have been a painful bacon grease incident.  

After breakfast the power was still off, and it had now been two hours. I made plans to put the food in our camping ice-chest in case it was out much longer and then sat in the living room by the big window to read.  It's a lovely book -- The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which is lovely.  But even the beautiful prose of that book couldn't keep me from itching for my Facebook fix.  I wondered how we would survive if the power didn't come on soon -- Bob had a training appointment and the garage door opener wouldn't work, so he was going to have to take my car.  And I pondered taking my mother's car (which I NEVER do unless it's an emergency), which was also in the driveway, to civilization (the office) to check my email.


Fortunately the power came back on about 9:30am.  Ameren called back on their automated system to tell me the power was back on, and informed me that the reason for the outage was "a downed line." Since all of our lines are underground, I suspect there was another reason (perhaps Charlie Sheen nibbled on them).  But no matter, the power was restored, and I was able to leave my pioneer life behind me once again.

Would this be tacky?

During lunch I was working on an ad for Pawsitive Transformations for the ACHR Rainbow Connection.

And I got an email from Equality Illinois asking if I was willing to be listed in a directory of clergy who will perform Civil Unions, which I of course said yes to.  And then I wondered, should I put this ad in the Rainbow Connection too? Or is it tacky?

Yeah, I'm back, but oh so busy!

I love going on vacation. I LIVE for vacations. If I could change my profession to "vacationer" I would.  But I can't. So, getting ready to go on vacation, and then coming home, are exhausting.  Almost enough to keep me home and not vacationing (almost, but not quite).  And I'm finally starting to see some light after being home for a week+ -- piles of things are disappearing from my desks and I finally feel like I can take a moment to blog.

We did have a WONDERFUL time in Hunting Island, as usual.  We relaxed on the beach most days, watching for dolphins and reading.  Occasionally I took walks, alone or with Kayla or Bob, and looked for Sand Dollars.  I found two this year (I found hundreds more, but they were still alive, and that would be just mean).  I saved a bunch of them (putting them back in the water) and was rewarded with this beauty:

We ate and drank wine and just basically RELAXED. The best kind of vacay. And most nights we sat by a fire and looked at the full moon and gazillion stars. 

What did I read, you ask?  I read back issues of Vanity Fair I hadn't had time to read before, and a bunch of books while I was gone (all novels).  Someone asked me to name them all, which I couldn't at the time.  Let me try now ... let's see.  I read ...

When I got home, a new Vanity Fair was waiting for me.  And other came a few days ago.

Clearly I need another vacation ...

View of sky from chair sitting in our campsite.

Wordle

I created a Wordle of my Blog today. A Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.  I'm thrilled BOB is so big and prominent -- worried about tequila and bacon.  Click on it to see it bigger -- and if you create your own, please share it with me!

Bob Rocks!

I finally got hear Bob's "radio voice" today.  He was a DJ in college before I met him, and then his golden tones retired never to be heard from again.  Until today.  And he ROCKED IT!  Too bad it was only 10 minutes. But the host, Susan Almeida, liked him and he got three callers, and so he will be invited back sometime, hopefully soon!  You can here it at the link below if you missed him this morning.


Bob on WJBC


Sorry my entries have been so short lately, and always about Bob -- but hey, at least I've been blogging!

Bob's going on the radio!

In case you didn't read it on Facebook already, or on Twitter, or on the Pawstrans Blog ... Bob Ryder of Pawsitive Transformations, LLC, is going to be interviewed by Susan Almeida on WJBC this Saturday morning, Feb. 5, for about 10 minutes starting at about 10:10am.  Our hope is that he'll be so great (which he will be) that he'll be invited back, perhaps for a somewhat regular gig (once a month?) where folks can call in and ask questions.  In the meantime, he'll be able to plug the business (tell people about the web site) and positive reinforcement training.  


So don't forget to tune in Saturday (yes, I know, you'll have to miss part of "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" which I've already whined about) on either 1230AM or 93.7FM, or you can listen online at http://wjbc.com/show/the-broad-view/.

Snowtorious B.I.G. - Snowmageddon 2011 -- The Snowpocalypse

We opened the garage in preparation for Bob to tackle the driveway -- this is what we saw:

But Bob would not be deterred from clearing out our driveway, in spite of the challenge of our very old Simplicity snow blower not working at first.  It started up, it made tons of noise, but, as you can tell at the beginning of the video, it did not .... blow.  But Bob triumphed over the machine and ultimately, our driveway.

A job well done!

Thanks old friend!

Now if we could just get our street plowed.

"They" say we got 13 inches, which sounds about right, but does not account for the blowing and drifting.  Our deck alone has 30+ inch drifts, and we won't even try to open the sliding glass door in fear of the avalanche that will come into our kitchen.

Fortunately Bob fed the birds early Tuesday so they won't starve (and we have a heated bird bath for them to get water from).  A few cardinals are venturing out, and finches, when the crows and starlings don't chase them away.

Female cardinal -- crows scared the male away.

Finches from Tuesday during the storm.