It was a dark and stormy weekend…

…And I was home by myself and the power went out! Brandon was at the UW Homecoming game and I had to fend for myself. I was able to get by just fine. Our house and the pizza oven also fared just fine. The wind caused some of our bistro lights to come unhooked, and a lot of leaves and needles to fall in the backyard, but it wasn’t too bad. I’m so glad that no big branches fell off of the trees and that nothing came crashing down on the pizza oven. We’ve gotten great use out of it, but not enough for the effort we put into it!

Windstorm hits the backyard and the bistro lights fared just fine!

I wrote the rest of this post last Sunday night, nearly 24 hours into the power outage. (The lights came back a few hours later and then went out again all night on Monday.)

The fireplace is turned on (it’s gas), I’ve got my headlamp at the ready, and I discovered the “light my keys” function on my laptop. My laptop was fully charged last night, so I’ve got ~7 hours of uninterrupted writing time ahead of me.  I’ve also been using my new Kindle PaperWhite, which is backlit, enabling me to read the one item I had gotten around to uploading. Fortunately/unfortunately it was a Jackie Collins teaser for several new romance books she has out. That’s what I get for searching the freebie books, I guess. Once the power is back on, I’m absolutely downloading some actual books.

I was thinking back to last year and I’m pretty sure that there was a power outage on Megan’s Island (Mercer Island) Halloween 2013. Seeing the ‘wind warning’ notices and driving through the sheets of rain last night tipped me off to what was to come and I charged my phone as soon as I got home. One of the best decisions I’ve ever made! This year’s outage was much longer than last year’s. Last year we blamed the lack of a single trick-or-treater on the power outage.  This year, we again failed to receive even one trick-or-treater.  Maybe it is the lack of sidewalks and street lamps and the dead end street. 

It’s been a rough couple of weeks for the residents of Mercer Island. On Sept. 27 we had strains of e.coli found in our water and a “boil water notice” went into effect. That lasted for 11 days and  was much harder on the businesses than on the residents. Businesses lost a ton of money and I’ve heard of at least one business that wasn’t able to recover. Our grocery stores had to throw out a ton of food and it was pretty slim-pickings around here for a while.

Boil-water advisory on Mercer Island

No seafood here… or veggies… or meats… or deli foods…

Bottle-water-washed veggies at QFC

The Associated Press even contacted me on Instagram and ended up using two of my photos for their articles about our e. coli.

Thankfully very few of the Mercer Island businesses were affected by this seemingly-never-ending power outage. (Yes, I’m being overly dramatic. I just want to shower, ok!?) Little Britches Bakery was ok, since I had access to my Etsy account via my phone and I filled my outstanding order before the storm rolled in.

It’s a lot more fun being stuck in dark solitude with someone else. The cats are great, but every time the wind picked up or pinecones fell on our roof, they would freak out and run and hide. I wanted to do the same, but that wasn’t in the cards for me. We’ve been closely following Puget Sound Energy on social media—not via their online outage map though, it’s virtually unusable via a mobile phone—and know what to expect. We collected all the candles, turned on the fireplace and unearthed our headlamps from Alaska.

We’ve got headlamps!

Power outage? Glassybabies are the solution!

Maddie loves the fire!

Studying by candlelight

Our power was out long enough that we had to get rid of some of the perishable foods in the fridge and freezer. We started cleaning things out and realized that the garbage disposal was electric. Whoops. Thankfully we got power back quickly after this poor decision and it wasn’t as gross as it could have been. Note to self: don’t do that again.

What not to do in a power outage

Even though they couldn’t find the source of the e.coli, I hope it’s behind us for awhile. Our water is super-chlorinated now and my skin and hair is sort-of getting used to it. Cheers to a new month, hopefully a better one for us Mercer Islanders.