Would you could you in the dark?

So it seems to be a frequent occurrence these days that we get some serious winds out here. Just this last Monday, at 4:30 in the morning, we awoke to loud whooshing, the power going out, and our daughter crying upstairs because her night lights weren't working. So nobody really got to sleep after that . . .

So then I got up and got ready. In fact, I still used my beloved elliptical trainer even though there was no power to give resistance and stuff. Hey, better than nothing. I checked in with the office and, sure enough, they had power. After I got there, Dr. H said "I've been here 8 years and we've only gone home once". So, I began a rather major project. Before doing so, though, we made sure we could back out of anything we might start (like put temporaries on and stuff). Needless to say, it was about the time the storm really seemed to be dying down that we lost power. I was basically done preparing the patient's top four front teeth for crowns, and I had begun the two canines. (we were planning to get all 6 ready) Man, we were so close. So, we worked a bit more with the remaining air in the compressor and I used my headlamp (which I recently used at Camp Meriwether :-) for some light to help us make the temporary crowns and stuff. It was pretty wacky, and hopefully we can get things finished up soon so my patient can have an awesome smile for the holidays.


Our power here in Hammond seems to have stayed out longer than anybody else's I've heard of. We were out for about 21 hours, and it became fortunate that we had the generator hookup installed a month or so ago (thanks Art!). The generator is pretty noisy, and we found out that the washer does not want to spin when you're using it. I was able to vacuum out the Scout camp debris from the GTI, though. And, I hopefully made up for the noise by letting the neighbor on that side plug in her fridge and freezer. I guess gusts were up to about 85 mph . . . I was surprised we didn't lose any shingles this time. Four or five pieces of my neighbor's shed ended up in my backyard, and their back fence is leaning a lot now. My new fence, with the 3 foot concrete post burial and 4x6 posts, held firm. Yay! One tree on our street is no more, and a large sign at a nearby intersection had its posts snap. Very exciting . . . and scary.