I work what is called a 9/80 schedule, which consists of working 9 hour days from Monday - Thursday for two weeks and then taking the second Friday off. I reminded my manager that it was my Friday off and was relieved that I wouldn't have to wake up Friday morning worrying about having to drive into work on icy roads.
We fell into a fitful sleep on Thursday evening but awoke to cold darkness at 3:30 AM on Friday morning. Unfortunately, the power was out and Oncore was estimating that they wouldn't get it back on again until 9:30 AM the next morning. We have a gas fireplace, but it has an electronic ignition. As the morning progressed and the house kept getting colder, Tegan Marie started looking at the fireplace to see if there was a workaround to get it started. After consulting the fireplace's spec sheets we found that there is a battery backup system for ignition! This backup requires "D" batteries and fortunately there were some in Tegan Marie's "billy club" flashlight. She installed the batteries, flipped the switch and then Voila, a beautiful and cozy fire started! This made things much more comfortable for us in the Living Room! Here's a picture of the lovely fire that kept us warm that day:
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| The "Tegan Marie Rigged" Fireplace |
As the day progressed, we started to get hungry and desperately started wanting our coffee and tea. We have a small charcoal grill that was sitting in about an inch of ice on a table out in the back yard. Tegan Marie went out back and got the charcoal stoking and then we put a pot full of water on it to heat up for our hot drinks. Here's a picture of Tegs posing with our hot water. She really looks like an ice queen in this one!
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| The Texas Ice Queen |
What a pretty picture! We planned what we were going to eat as we sipped our hot drinks and decided to have bacon, eggs and bagels. Here's a picture of me cooking our meal out on the grill:
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| Makin' bacon on the grill! |
Next came some scrambled eggs:
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| Grilled Scrambled Eggs |
Then the cinnamon raisin bagels:
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| Grilled Bagels |
Then we lit some candles and sat down at the table to enjoy our meal. Here's Tegan Marie sitting at the table:
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| Tegs at the Table |
And here's one of me sitting at the table:
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| Me at the Table |
Meanwhile, the dogs were running around outside in the ice wonderland:
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| Katy and Sheila Out Back |
It didn't take them any time to find the bacon grease that we drained onto the ground:
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| Eating Some Bacon Ice! |
They chewed up all of the ice and then into the ground to get that bacon flavor!
We were concerned about the food thawing n the refrigerator, so we brought the perishables outside to be in "nature's freezer".
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| Nature's Freezer |
After our brunch, we kept the fire stoked to keep our hot drinks coming and to be ready to cook Supper. We were able to keep our phones charged with a UPS Box, so we had a lot of fun talking and getting online with our cell phones to talk with our Facebook friends about the ice storm and other matters.
Throughout the day the power came on a few times for just a second or two and then petered back out. It finally came back on for good at 5:30 PM. We were very happy to have our power back on!
We cooked some ham, macaroni and cheese, peas and some crescent rolls for Supper and ate it with the candles that we lit earlier that day:
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| Candlelight Supper |
Despite the fact that we lost our power, we ended up having a wonderful time! This day made us realize how resourceful we can be when necessary and was a reminder of all of the blessings we have on a daily basis. Thank God for our blessings!
