Speaking of the weather, and things you have to do when power goes out.

I remember when our power went out for 3-4 days during a late December ice storm several years ago. We lived in the country and had a well so when the power went out of course the well pump would not work and we had no water. Luckily we had an above ground pool at the time which wasn't entirely frozen over so we dipped a bucket in the pool and carried the pool water inside to flush the toilets. We also had a fireplace and we all ""camped out"" in the living room and kept feeding the fire to stay warm.

Once we had a power outage early evening here. We went out onto out lanai, lit all the candles we have out there and had a nice candlelight swim in our pool before turning in for the night. Hope all of you up north are keeping warm and safe.

After Sandy we had a Generac Guardian Standby generator installed. Luckily so far it has only gone on a few times for less than a 1/2 hour. But my brother has one in his home. He has had power outages lasting over a week and the generator has been a God Send.

A couple of years ago it seemed the power went out every time we sneezed. I finally called our power company and they found a problem in their system. That being said, we broke down during that time and bought a portable generator and it's the best thing we ever did for peace of mind. We were dead in the water without power and our dogs seemed to kind of freak out. What I missed the most was our morning coffee if the power went out during the night.

We had an ice storm many years ago and I had lost my job. The power was out for 7 days and I had no place to go with four pets. I didn't know at the time that my landline still worked not that it mattered. I put the food outside in a container and stayed in bed under the covers with just candles.

It was horrible, I thought I would freeze to death but I wasn't leaving my dogs. Every now and then we would go sit in the car to warm up. Then the cleanup started by me that was outside, I could barely get out the back door with all the down branches and a hole in the roof.

We just have to go out to the garage and start the generator. We live in hurricane country so having a generator is a very good idea. At least enough to run the fridge and a radio and a lamp.

Back in the mid 90s, Georgia got an ice storm that paralyzed all of north Georgia and the wind knock tons of trees over the power lines in south Georgia. All of our emergency power company crews headed to Atlanta Metro area to restore power there first. We were without power for 3 weeks waiting our turn to be considered important enough to get power back on. We were in a rural, small town, so we had to wait. The city had gas and limited power, but also had running water, while we are in the county and had nothing. We had a fireplace blower system installed and were using that for the winter to heat the house, so we already had that going with plenty of wood. We also had a hand pump well on the property, so that is how we got water from our well. We cooked on the grill outside and went to town to granny's house when she had water to bath. Other relatives were staying with her because they didn't have a hand pump or fireplaces for heat, so we camped out for 3 weeks.

Today the power doesn't go down for more than a few hours when the storms are bad, but we also have hurricanes and tropical storms to deal with, but fortunately we haven't had a direct or indirect hit in my lifetime. We tend to get the late middle to end of them, so power is out for a day maybe with minimum damage. We are fortunate to have come from a long line of self sufficient people to have the equipment we have and the knowledge of how to continue on without modern conveniences, power being one of them.