16 June 2008

One of my neighbors has published some photos on Flickr of a tree that fell across Dale Drive a couple of weeks ago in a wicked storm that blew through our area. It not only disrupted traffic on a busy street--it disrupted power to our neighborhood for about 2 and a half days.

I didn't mind not having lights and TV...it was actually a nice change of pace to light candles and open the windows and just...talk. What really got to me was the heat. The upstairs of our 30s era Cape Cod is normally hotter than other parts of the house anyway..but it was downright unbearable with temps in the 90s during the day and the 80s at night. The girl was fine up there, but I got too hot so I took to our livingroom couch. It's right next to a window and it cooled off pretty well, but by 5:30 in the morning, seemingly every bird in America was outside that window squaking their little hearts out. Needless to say, I was a little cranky those couple of days.

Thank goodness for our neighborhood listserv. Neighbors kept in touch throughput the day with updates on what was happening--or more like it, NOT happening--when it came to the County removing the tree. Folks called County council people, the Dept of Public Works, and other various governmental agencies to apply a little pressure.

We were ready to go to a hotel the third night, but when we came home from work we met at "the tree" to see if there was any movement. Alas, the County sent a truck and it was being mulched and chopped up before our eyes. I was still a bit skeptical they could get the power back on after that (the girl seemed to think it would be on almost immediately after the tree was removed)... so we decided to grab a bite to eat and see what happens after that. At the end of our meal, the girl decided to call home and see if we could get our answering machine to pick up. Well, it did...and we enjoyed a blissful evening in our AC and computer and television....