Dangerous Winds, No Wifi, Lots Of Deadfall But No Real Damage

7:43

8:40

It’s 8:00 and I am sitting here in my living room, without cable or wifi and it’s been this way since yesterday at 1:30. Because of the heavy winds which started around noon and did not really end until last night sometime, a large part of Chautauqua County was without it although most did seem to have electricity. Despite the loss of cable, somehow Alexa just asked me if I wanted to reorder some drugs. I no longer feel isolated. And I just looked out our front window at our yard littered with deadfall and it's beginning to snow. It's 9:55 and I was just about ready to gather my yoga gear, jump in the car, and drive to Ryders Cup which had wifi, and publish the blog when, viola, the internet, and wifi returned. 

It looks like the forecast for the next day or two includes snow, 4 to 8 inches, and winds gusting as high as 50 mph. Not as scary as yesterday but still some cause for concern. 

Tuesday was obviously not a normal day and I skipped kayaking because of the winds. I did, however, get the blog done and despite the wind, rain, sleet, and some ice, drive to Lakewood to yoga class.  I thought I might be one of the few to attend because of the weather but we had decent size class of ten. After class, I stopped for a coffee and then drove to Wegmans to pick up some groceries that Evie wanted for our dinners. It was Tuesday, fairly busy because of the 5% off for “old” people. 

When I returned home, Evie had filled the bathtub with water, just in case we lost electricity, turned on our fireplace, turned up the upstairs thermostats and made tuna salad for dinner, just in case. They were smart things to do since we soon lost cable. Evie also made soup while I was gone with raviolis, so I had it along with a quarter of a sub I bought a few days ago, hoping it was still edible. I watched some of The Wire but midway through an episode, the wifi went off and that was it for the day, evening, and this morning. We did get notices from Spectrum saying they thought it would be fixed by 6:00 PM, then another alert saying they were having trouble getting it done and that’s the last we heard from them. 

Tuesday Afternoon Winds

Our afternoon didn’t change much except for a quiet house, no music, no news, no films, just a wind-blown house. It was so windy that the house shook on and off and it picked up my kayak which was sitting on the docks, and threw it up in the air and over the rowboat, into the bushes. The weather apps said the wind was a steady 27mph with gusts up to 60 mph, and both may have been underestimated. The strangest part was the cold weather and snow disappeared as the temperatures reached up to 50 after averaging in the 30s for the past four or five days if not colder. 

It was strange to spend an afternoon and early evening without the radio or TV. Evie, however, using 5G on her phone was able to access various sights so we were not completely isolated from the world although it seemed that way. I spent most of the afternoon reading a new novel from Robert Galbraith called The Running Grave, the seventh in the series. It supposedly will take me 19 hours to read! I also was able to get in a nap despite the winds roaring, the house shaking. 

By 5:00, we decided the best way to deal with the outage was alcohol so I made us a couple of old fashioned and we had appetizers along with the drinks, sushi from Wegmans, spicy cashews, and a good cheese and crackers. Usually, we are listening to the radio at this time so it was strange to have such utter quiet. 

We enjoyed our dinner on the couches, Evie’s tuna and macaroni salad, with hardboiled eggs and tomatoes. It tasted good although we were both looking forward to the brownies Evie made in the afternoon, with vanilla ice cream of course. I was able to follow some of the NBA scores on my phone's 5G although it does not always seem to be available, like this morning. Evie stayed up until 9:00 and I joined her around 9:30, tired of sitting around the living room although once the sky darkened, the wind seemed to calm down some. It made sleeping much easier.