It was one degree above zero earlier this morning. Unfortunately, that was our high temperature for the day. It’s all downhill from here down to two below at the moment. Plus, it’s really windy, so the windchill right now is about -27°. All the churches are even closing today. That’s gotta mean quite a loss of revenue what with Sunday being their big day. Pretty piss-poor planning on God’s part – not a very intelligent design.

We also got a shitload of snow overnight. I don’t know how much exactly – all I can tell you is that I had to go out and shovel the back yard so the dogs could get out and take a shit. I’d get the tractor out to plow it, but the gates are buried in snow and I can’t open them. Plus the post shifted on one gate and the with the ground frozen solid, the latch is jammed and I can’t open it. It’s not snowing at the moment but you’d never know it, ‘cuz the wind is blowing so hard it looks like a blizzard out there.

My sister lost power at her house for about 14 hours on Friday night into yesterday afternoon. The wind and snow took a tree down out in the middle of nowhere, and it took the power company about 12 hours to find it what with it being buried in the snow. Naturally my brother-in-law had a helluva time digging out a spot outside for the generator and then getting the damn thing started. Shit’s always a lot tougher in the middle of the night in the freezing cold.

It was good excuse to drag out the kerosene heaters, though.

They apparently don’t have the teevee, Internet, or pellet stoves hooked up to the generator circuits, though. Bit of an oversight. I have tv, Internet, pellet stoves, boiler, and pump all hooked up. Plus we have a couple kerosene heaters. Out here, you’re on your own so it pays to be prepared.

Of course, it dawned on me that I hadn’t run my generator in quite a while (not since last summer when some drunk chick took down a pole in the village and knocked out our power for 12 hours or so). I figured I’d better see if it still starts (and of course I had to shovel out a spot for it), and fortunately it fired up pretty easily (the battery’s been beat for a while, but four pulls got it going). Then I realized that I’d used up all my extra gasoline for the power washer over the summer, and the gennie was damn near empty. So it was off to the gas station to fill up the gas cans.

So now I’m prepared – which hopefully means there won’t be a need for it.