Next Week We Borrow a Generator!
Greetings everyone to everyone reading this. As you can tell by the fact that I am on the computer, we do have our electricity back on. The day was a bit easier to deal with this time, mostly due to the Thermos full of hot tea I had ready this morning. But the rain and hail storms did not go down well...though I did manage to read most of the Sunday newspaper. The phone also kept working, which meant we could keep in touch with everyone. But only if we were willing to shiver in the hallway while doing it. In the midst of huddling in a dark kitchen, the mail came. And guess what? Another one? Another cut off notice? For NEXT MONDAY! Even my Irish house-mate, who is not much frazzled by this sort of thing managed with proper reserve to say, "That makes four times this month, isn't that a bit excessive?" I would have used a few more colorful adjectives, but I do very much agree with him. I started fuming and he reasonably pointed out that at least we weren't paying for the juice if its wasn't on. Nothing like cool, clear, logic when you are having a good fume makes you just want to sit down and hit something...grrrrrr
I decided to smash over-large turf pieces instead. I found banging them on the top of the stove made a very satisfying noise and was less expensive than smashing crockery. It also had the advantage of producing turf pieces small enough to stuff into the stove. Now, those of you following the Disaster Cat Chronicles may remember that our turf stove has a name. TOZ. Toz got his name because our old electric oven cooked things so fast that its name was ZOT. TOZ is well, the opposite of ZOT. And Today was no exception. Part of this was my fault as I chose to spend a good deal of the day in the drawing room, where there was both natural light and another stove fire going. Neither stove seemed inclined to get very hot, until it was almost 5 pm, then they started to perk up. My husband had gone on a day trip to Dublin, so it was just me and the Lizard sitting around trying to pretend that life was normal. The Lizard asked about tea and I decided to check the stove. Of course, neither kettle or stove were very hot. So I stuffed turf, open flues and generally fiddled around with the thing. And was rewarded with boiling water. I was happily pouring tea at 5:40 pm when the lights came back on.....grrrrrr
Merlin came over just before the lights came back on and asked if we would like to bring over his generator before next Monday. We jumped at the chance. It seems he is going out of town and won't need it for a week or two. This will give us a chance to see what running one is like and if we want to bother getting one ourselves. Even The Lizard (who is very cautious about things like money) is starting to feel like it might be a good investment. We thought about getting one around Y2K time but deciding the ones available here then were just too expensive and wouldn't help all that much. What we did not expect was to have to buy one because our own electric company keeps cutting us off, on purpose! There are also rumors that the looming oil shortage may force them to do rolling blackouts later in the year. Even though that is not what is happening now, the fact that they are willing to cut people off so often and so long indicates a generator turn out to be a good idea indeed. I suspect they are cheaper now than they were five years ago, or Merlin would not have one. On the other hand, Merlin is a real deal maker, one of his favorite phrases is "it'll be the finest....whatever object he is trying to talk you into getting." But since he is not trying to sell it to us, I'm willing to give this a try. The more so because I am brain-dead when it comes to machines, so it will be the guys that have to deal with it.
Tonight I am just enjoying a return to 21 century life for the time being. I'm discovering that I'd much rather keep my survivalist interest to reading the Time-Bomb 2000 website than continuing to practice living them for real. But I suspect that living out here will continue to give my family endless opportunities to keep practicing. Though I hope that like the Duck and Cover drills of my childhood, they turn out to be just that: Practice for Disaster, not having to live through it.
Meanwhile, I think I'll see if there's a nice Disaster Cat documentary on TV tonight something soothing like volcanic eruptions or falling meteorite. And then I think I'll try and get some sleep...
More later,
Disaster Cat
PS SSG - I will get to the story of how we got to Ireland...soon...