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Originally posted by Brenda:
Out in a bit. Have to find out what I can use to soak my partial because of everything having mint it. I can't have mint. Then a couple of other things to do.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Out in a bit. Have to find out what I can use to soak my partial because of everything having mint it. I can't have mint. Then a couple of other things to do.

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. I went online looking for a mint-free denture cleaner. Maybe they make something like that, but I sure didn't find any!

So I thought, well maybe soak in peroxide? But then I found it's not recommended bc the peroxide can damage some of the materials.


And since I don't have partials this is kind of out of my experience, but don't you have to rinse your partials before you put them in? And/ or scrub with a soft toothbrush? Doesn't that get rid of the taste? Or is it the smell? Maybe use a cover on whatever you soak them in so it doesn't keep effervescencing scent into the air?

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Got back a while ago after doing everything outside. Inside I managed to finally sort out my t-shirt drawer. Yay! Found a couple too small for me, several that need washing and rechecking. Along with a couple that have logos on them that I had forgotten I even had and those need to be washed.


As I was going out this morning there were a couple of cops wanting in. Not sure what happened but one of them had a paper with them. Not good.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Got back a while ago after doing everything outside. Inside I managed to finally sort out my t-shirt drawer. Yay! Found a couple too small for me, several that need washing and rechecking. Along with a couple that have logos on them that I had forgotten I even had and those need to be washed.


As I was going out this morning there were a couple of cops wanting in. Not sure what happened but one of them had a paper with them. Not good.

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Yeah, it's good to do a deep dive thru your stuff every now and then. Sometimes there are useful things buried in the pile!

Well, well. Cops with papers. THAT woukd make me curious!

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
are uote]Originally posted by Brenda:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Got back a while ago after doing everything outside. Inside I managed to finally sort out my t-shirt drawer. Yay! Found a couple too small for me, several that need washing and rechecking. Along with a couple that have logos on them that I had forgotten I even had and those need to be washed.


As I was going out this morning there were a couple of cops wanting in. Not sure what happened but one of them had a paper with them. Not good.

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Yeah, it's good to do a deep dive thru your stuff every now and then. Sometimes there are useful things buried in the pile!

Well, well. Cops with papers. THAT woukd make me curious!

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Yeah, that drawer really was a jumble of stuff. No wonder I couldn't find things.

I know but unless a notice goes up because of them doubt anyone will know. Between you and me it did make me curious.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Leaving stuff underfoot? That's bad juju!


Hubby has Menieres disease that had to be corrected thru brain surgery. As a result he hasVERY poor balance. We've often joked that he would never pass the roadside sobriety test! I have to be extremely careful not to leave anything on the floor remotely near a pathway. He's stumbled over improbable things.

Speaking of decluttering... I think I FINALLY got all the recycling cleared up that dear daughter squirreled away bcshe was going to get to it "later" but never did. Some of it even with her help. Looks better!

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Lucky you!

It's 102°F ATM.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Heya SIX!

Glad you're OK!

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Hey Sigs. You too. I trust you're staying out of that heat as much as possible.

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12 days without power? That's ridiculous! But thank goodness for the genny! We keep toying with the idea of battery backup but a generator is probably a much cheaper and better bet.

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Yeah... Insane, really. But the crazy part about it was after 3 or 4 days it just became my new normal. That first night I was setting my alarm every 2 hours to check on the generator, and I know I didn't get to sleep until at least 4AM the first couple of nights. By around night 9 I was falling asleep watching movies well before midnight. Part of that was I was pretty sure by then anyone who needed a generator either bought one or stole one and I was in the clear. NWI is probably now the most prepared portion of the country for the next storm in the history of the nation. Not just because of this event, but the one that knocked out 1/3rd of the same customers for 3 to 5 days just 6 or so weeks ago. If they didn't learn their lesson the first time, they sure better have the second time or they get what they deserve the third time.

Get yourself a generator first. It's a no-brainier. But don't forget you need a few extension cords that are up to the task too. I probably went super overboard when I bought a 100ft cord that came out to more than a buck a foot after taxes for my sump well, but I'll never lose sleep worrying that it's going to melt on me. Until day 2 of the last power outage I would never have even dared to try to hook up the fridge on a plain orange 100ft extension cord, but I had to save the insulin and found it it wasn't a problem.

This time I was able to rotate that orange plug and do quite a few things with it. First and foremost, making coffee is no longer an issue whether my power is up or not.

I had it powering my laptop and charging my phones and my Ryobi batteries on my 6-battery charger every 2 or 3 nights just to keep everything topped off. No more sitting in my car reading a book for a few hours while the phone and my diabetes monitor charged up. No more worrying about what I was going to do when my 12 batteries for my flashlights inevitably ran out of juice long before the power came back up.

I had my Dad take all my insulin in an iced up cooler back to his place for me and just kept my existing bottle and the one I'd be opening soon, and I didn't have all that much food so I just threw out the stuff I couldn't cook, ate what I could eat and had that thing shut off after day 2. I'm sure I could have run the fridge and sump and still do everything else I was doing without overloading the generator, but with only 2 A/C outlets on the thing, it would have meant taking the fridge off of the plug for hours at a time, and I probalby wouldn't have watched any movies and would have had the plug split in the kitchen charging everything up overnight while feeding the fridge if I didn't give the insulin to Dad.

They're not cheap, but if you get yourself a nice one and follow the maintenance instructions, you will get years of use and piece of mind out of it. JUST MAKE SURE YOU ALWAYS HAVE ENOUGH GAS ON HAND FOR A FEW DAYS!!!! Ask me how I know.

Mine isn't huge or an especially large energy export at only 3 gallon capacity and 2900 watts, but it was a DeWalt that was built 24 years ago and still kicks ass to this day. I've gone several years without ever firing it up, and it always starts in a few pulls if not the first pull.

And once I install that house generator R/V style plug with the interlock kit on the box to make sure I never feed the grid on accident by forgetting to turn off the main before plugging in the generator, I'll be able to feed anything I want inside the house. Lights aren't a problem at 9watts a piece when you've got 2900 to play with. You'll see my house from space I'll have this place so lit up next time.

Once I install that inverter and marine battery setup my neighbor has, things will only get better. I'll never have to worry about voltage spikes on any of my sensitive equipment every time the sump pump starts up and draws 3 times the current for the first second or two. Even all oiled up and primed to go, I don't need to be inside the house to know when the pump is going off because the generator is telling me all I need to know. You can feel that initial spike and the overtime it's working until the pump shuts off.

There's a very good chance at only 2200 watts, his generator couldn't even handle the starting wattage of a 1/2hp to 1hp pump that wasn't well designed. But he never directly feeds it at all. He's got the batteries charging when they need to be charged, and the pump runs off of that. He's only got two marine batteries, but he said he could add as many as he wanted to the bank, and after this storm he intends to do just that.

Another of my neighbors just bought his first generator. I found out yesterday he also has a battery that he charges with solar panels and made some good use out of that too, but it just wasn't enough and he he got himself a Harbor Freight generator that claims to be 4000 watts.

Don't do that. I just looked up the prices and I'm shocked to see how cheap DeWalt generators are in 2026. I would have figured that an equivalent to my model had to be over $1000 today, but that couldn't be further from the truth. My 2900 watt model is only stating the Starting Wattage, which is the extra capacity it has to handle power spikes like pumps for short bursts of time. The actual Running Wattage is only 2,400 watts. I'm looking at Home Depot right now and you can get a 5000/4000 watt DeWalt with a 3.4 gallon tank for only $729!!!

I'll tell you what... After what I just went through, anybody and I mean ANYBODY who owns a home is a fool not to have one of their own. I'm not joking. I'm not being cute. When I get my plug on my house, I just might buy a new generator and be able to do literally everything I would have already been doing even when the power is out. For $1,100, I could have a 8,125/6,000 watt genny with a 7.5 gallon tank and power the lives of mine and my next door neighbors as if the power never went out. For only $100 more, I could have a 10,000/8,000 watter with 7.5 gallon tank.

Who knows? Maybe 22 years ago my little 2,900/2,400 watter was a top of the line piece for DeWalt? Seriously Sigs... Don't sleep on it. Just spend the money and get one. Get a DeWalt. Don't mess with the Harbor Freight or Costco specials on this. I know a lot of people who have, and I'm not going to be the guy to shit all over their parade, but they're risking a whole lot to save a couple of hundred bucks.


I fully intend to take pictures of and take many notes of both the inverter/marine battery setup in the one house as well as the solar panel/battery setup in the other house once things settle down around here and I get a couple of other things handled and I'm ready to work on it. I figure I'm looking at about a $1,200 investment to start it off, but that will give me 2 or maybe even 3 marine batteries, and unlike a Basement Watchdog system for $600, all of this is modular and anything that fails can be easily and cheaply replaced instead of throwing the whole thing out and buying a new one.

Start with the genny. Build from there. You've already got a whole roof full of solar panels. If you get yourself set up with a good marine battery array like my neighbor has, you can probably charge up those things quite a bit during your own 2 week outage, but on those days where the sun just won't peek out, there ain't nothing like running everything you need off of gas.

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I can't imagine why your neighbor isn't talking to you. Taking down that tree saved both of you from a lot of damage. They should be THANKING you. Sheesh!

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I think I may have come at them a little too hard, honestly. I can be a hot head sometimes and in 15 years I don't think either of them have ever seen that side of me before that day. I wasn't raising my voice with brows furrowed or anything, but I left my usual cheery demeanor mask on the floor at my bed and just told them what the facts were and what the future held if some potential future played out. If anything, I imagine there's much deeper feelings involved too. I don't work. They know I don't work. They both work full time jobs and have two kids to raise. They buy a whole bunch of shit that they don't need and likely don't actually Own any of the things worth over $20,000 that the bank actually owns. And here I am telling them I don't have insurance and they're going to have to pay for my house getting destroyed if their tree falls on it. I can't imagine if the roles were reversed that I would be very happy to have that news blindside me 2 days into a power outage either.

I hope she gets over it. Her husband hasn't talked to me either since trying to get me to pay for half of the job again, but I think that's more about just not creating any waves at home than anything else. I've done a lot for them over the years, like saving their garage, and letting them borrow my mower for the back half of a summer, and helping them move a ton of furniture when they were having their floors remodeled, and capping off their gas on their stove and fixing a leaky valve on their sink when they were having the kitchen remodeled. They've given me about 6 free meals and a $25 card in the same time. Who's the one losing out here?

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So, gotta say ... NOW do you think global climate change might be a real thing? Just bc TPTB treat it like a "get rich quick/ consolidate even MORE power" opportunity doesn't mean it isn't happening.

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Sigs... I give everything 50/50. If I can't give God more than that, I'm sure as shit not going to give it to the climate changers or the deniers.

I dunno. Whatever... It's not like there is anything that I could ever do or say that is going to change the trajectory that we're on, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

I just lived through what most people (including myself 2 weeks ago) would consider hell on earth for 12 days and was having fun by the end of it.

If this becomes our new normal, I'm going to be the most prepared of anybody for it. Not just with my new setup, but mentally as well. I hope climate change isn't real. But as long as the water doesn't evaporate and we're not all catching on fire, I'm not worried that I'm going to have any problems surviving it. I learned a lot of good lessons this time that I'm not going to ever forget. And no better time than right now to make all the adjustments and preparations I need to make sure the next time, when I likely have a job I can't go AWOL on for two weeks, it will hardly be an inconvenience.

But 50/50 split or not, I don't really give a shit. Because the only people who ever actually follow any of the rules we make are ourselves, and we've made our labor completely unaffordable to ourselves and the rest of the world in doing so. I don't want to hear about it. Until everybody stops buying shit they don't need; Until companies worldwide are FORCED to make good products that might cost more but will last a lifetime like they used to and they stop selling us purposely disposable shit, and until somebody convinces China and India and everywhere else to play by the same planet-saving rules that the US and EU abide, I don't want to hear about it.

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Anyway... the heat this summer has been relentless. I think we had all of three or four days in the past two months below 88. So I've been doing work inside, decluttering and holding dear daughter's feet to the fire and the house does look visibly better. Still quite a ways to go but happy with the results so far.

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Yeah... It was pretty bad here, but not nearly as hot as by you. The humidity up until a few days ago here was the killer this year. I put out all my horses in the basement to hang my soggy clothes on (either head to toe sweat or from working out in the rain), and 4 days later they were still wet and started to stink and there was nothing I could do about it but wait. The air was saturated and there was nowhere for the moisture to go.

Glad you're getting work done inside the house and staying out of that heat. When you work with DD on things like this does she understand why she should be doing what you're telling her she needs to do and that she should continue to do that regularly so it's not a major project when it gets done? I ask, because as a single man who regularly does that to himself, it can be debilitating. When I keep up with things and everything is clean around me, I feel a lot better about life in general. But when I immerse myself so deeply into projects to the exclusion of nearly everything else in life including regular chores, my overall outlook on life in general takes a real negative turn along with it. It's like my insides become a reflection of what I've chosen to make my space look like.

Forgive me for imposing, and I don't mean any judgement or want to make you feel like you need to be on the defensive. But I think it's important to consider that aspect of your situation with DD if you haven't already. I'm coming at that conclusion simply from remembering how my mom and step-dad never had any patience and never actually explained anything to me or why I should do any of it. The phrases "Because" and "Do as I say, not as I do" were frequent in the vernacular of Hell House.

But I was kicked out when I was 19, and though it's been absent almost everywhere else in my life ever since, fortune smiled upon me and gave me a solid enough head on my shoulders to learn all the lessons I never did as a kid, many of them in just about the hardest way possible, and somehow come out the other end of it alive.

DD's going to need those lessons for herself someday. I don't know what her strengths and weakness are, but I do get the feeling that perhaps she wouldn't be able to learn some lessons like this on her own without somebody she trusts to explain them to her in a way that makes sense to her, and that she will carry with her for the rest of her life. It's not even about learning lessons, exactly... It's the ability of being able to make that correlation between one's own depression and the state they keep their living quarters in, and how they can both be two polar ends of a downward spiral that just continues to feed itself if you can't find a way to shake yourself out of it.

And perhaps with you around to clean up the place and be the boss, she's never really even had to consider it all that much because I don't imagine you've ever let your home become anywhere close to uninhabitable as I've allowed my own space to become with no good woman around to kick my ass when I get out of line.



These are just things I suggest you mull over because I know a thing or two about depression and I've spent a very long time questioning what triggers it. Evaluating and always reevaluating things and finding where the lines positively and negatively correlate and where they intersect.

I don't think many people in general do this.

And the new data points I've gotten this summer with 15+ total days of no power or internet are astounding additions to the experiment.

I can't go to sleep again. Drinking or no, it just ain't no good.

I can do my computer projects. I can do my house projects. But I need to find a job and I especially need to be much more diligent in keeping up the few relationships I have that really mean something to me. There needs to be balance.

DD probably isn't going to have grand projects to balance and hopefully she will never have any heavy expectations hung on her that she needs to balance with the rest of her life, but just those little things like cleaning up after yourself and throwing away or gifting things you no longer have any use for (especially if it's literal trash), things that come so naturally to you and things that you can always get her to do when they get out of hand are just so important. And nobody ever told me any of that growing up. I missed the life of my half and step-brother who had a stay at home mom that went to every sporting event and academic event and play, and they all came home to an immaculately clean house which save for a few paint jobs or a new floor job here or there has looked identical every single time I've ever walked into it without a speck of dust or a single piece of paper out of place. I got a brother with what would be life ruining debilitation from OCD for anybody who didn't understand string theory and can't charge $300 per hour to tutor college kids on video calls out of that deal, so who's to say who had it better or worse?

I feel very much like you're in the healthy middle there. You're not 1,000% all the time, or even if you are, you don't demand that of your family while you're running circles around them all day long. And yet you don't let DD get off scot-free and you do try to teach her lessons while enforcing rules and keeping the place up to a level worthy of human habitation.

But if you feel that some of the lessons might not be sticking and you find yourself having to teach the same lessons over again, with or without pushback, maybe it's time to change tack a bit and do some experimentation.

Personally, I don't believe it's a scenario that benefits from either the carrot or the stick. Scolding her and making her feel bad or shamed for her behavior will have results, but none of them are going to be good in the end. Bribing or otherwise "rewarding" good behavior is just as bad for different reasons. I'm thinking "Long Term" about this when I say that. It works. For now.

Is she capable of understanding the correlation between a lack of cleanliness and order, and depression? Do you feel that it would be possible to instill a sense of pride in herself for doing things like this? Not because you asked her to do them, but because she just did them because it was the right thing to do, and it will make her happier to live in a place like the one that you keep rather than one that resembles the place that I keep until it drives me crazy and I spend a whole week or even two putting everything back together again?

If you believe yes to all of the above, I think you need to work on how to get her to grasp all of that and embrace it.


Like I said, Sigs... I hope you don't take any of that personally and that you're not offended by any of it. I'm only trying to be helpful and come at this from a vantage point that you may have not ever thought to look at it from.

And I know we can both be real bitches to each other sometimes, but I kind of love ya at the same time. We don't even know each other's real names and likely never will, but after all these years you are just about as much of my life as some of my real life connections.

I want to see your daughter succeed, and I know that is what you want for her too.

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So relieved that you're OK!

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That's really nice of you to say.

I'm glad the site is still up and it didn't finally disappear when I was gone. I knew you and Brenda would be worried and wondering with all the news on TV. But aside from a few minor snags in the first couple of days, everything was fine. Better than fine, actually.

Sorry to keep you both worrying for so long. 12 days feels like an eternity when you're not drowning in life's modern trappings. I can only hope they went by faster for you.

I think that's what I'm going to miss the most, now that the power is back on.

Two weeks felt almost like 2 years. So much happened around me, I made so much happen, and every day was almost entirely different from the last.

I can't go back to sleep...


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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Glad to see you're back SIX. Also glad your house didn't flood.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

They're not cheap, but if you get yourself a nice one and follow the maintenance instructions, you will get years of use and peace of mind out of it. JUST MAKE SURE YOU ALWAYS HAVE ENOUGH GAS ON HAND FOR A FEW DAYS!!!! Ask me how I know.

Mine isn't huge or an especially large energy export at only 3 gallon capacity and 2900 watts, but it was a DeWalt that was built 24 years ago and still kicks ass to this day. I've gone several years without ever firing it up, and it always starts in a few pulls if not the first pull.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Glad to see you're back SIX. Also glad your house didn't flood.

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Thanks Brenda.

Glad to be back. Was looking forward to when I could finally let you both know I was fine.

And I'm really glad my house didn't flood too.

Hit or miss there that first two days, but after that it was smooth sailing.



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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Out in a bit. Have to find out what I can use to soak my partial because of everything having mint it. I can't have mint. Then a couple of other things to do.

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. I went online looking for a mint-free denture cleaner. Maybe they make something like that, but I sure didn't find any!

So I thought, well maybe soak in peroxide? But then I found it's not recommended bc the peroxide can damage some of the materials.


And since I don't have partials this is kind of out of my experience, but don't you have to rinse your partials before you put them in? And/ or scrub with a soft toothbrush? Doesn't that get rid of the taste? Or is it the smell? Maybe use a cover on whatever you soak them in so it doesn't keep effervescencing scent into the air?

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Heya SIX!
Glad you're OK!

SIX:
Hey Sigs. You too. I trust you're staying out of that heat as much as possible.

SIGNY:
12 days without power? That's ridiculous! But thank goodness for the genny! We keep toying with the idea of battery backup but a generator is probably a much cheaper and better bet.

SIX:
Yeah... Insane, really. But the crazy part about it was after 3 or 4 days it just became my new normal. That first night I was setting my alarm every 2 hours to check on the generator, and I know I didn't get to sleep until at least 4AM the first couple of nights. By around night 9 I was falling asleep watching movies well before midnight. Part of that was I was pretty sure by then anyone who needed a generator either bought one or stole one and I was in the clear. NWI is probably now the most prepared portion of the country for the next storm in the history of the nation. Not just because of this event, but the one that knocked out 1/3rd of the same customers for 3 to 5 days just 6 or so weeks ago. If they didn't learn their lesson the first time, they sure better have the second time or they get what they deserve the third time.

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SIX:
Get yourself a generator first. It's a no-brainier. But don't forget you need a few extension cords that are up to the task too. I probably went super overboard when I bought a 100ft cord that came out to more than a buck a foot after taxes for my sump well, but I'll never lose sleep worrying that it's going to melt on me. Until day 2 of the last power outage I would never have even dared to try to hook up the fridge on a plain orange 100ft extension cord, but I had to save the insulin and found it it wasn't a problem.

This time I was able to rotate that orange plug and do quite a few things with it. First and foremost, making coffee is no longer an issue whether my power is up or not.

I had it powering my laptop and charging my phones and my Ryobi batteries on my 6-battery charger every 2 or 3 nights just to keep everything topped off. No more sitting in my car reading a book for a few hours while the phone and my diabetes monitor charged up. No more worrying about what I was going to do when my 12 batteries for my flashlights inevitably ran out of juice long before the power came back up.

I had my Dad take all my insulin in an iced up cooler back to his place for me and just kept my existing bottle and the one I'd be opening soon, and I didn't have all that much food so I just threw out the stuff I couldn't cook, ate what I could eat and had that thing shut off after day 2. I'm sure I could have run the fridge and sump and still do everything else I was doing without overloading the generator, but with only 2 A/C outlets on the thing, it would have meant taking the fridge off of the plug for hours at a time, and I probalby wouldn't have watched any movies and would have had the plug split in the kitchen charging everything up overnight while feeding the fridge if I didn't give the insulin to Dad.

They're not cheap, but if you get yourself a nice one and follow the maintenance instructions, you will get years of use and piece of mind out of it. JUST MAKE SURE YOU ALWAYS HAVE ENOUGH GAS ON HAND FOR A FEW DAYS!!!! Ask me how I know.

Mine isn't huge or an especially large energy export at only 3 gallon capacity and 2900 watts, but it was a DeWalt that was built 24 years ago and still kicks ass to this day. I've gone several years without ever firing it up, and it always starts in a few pulls if not the first pull.

And once I install that house generator R/V style plug with the interlock kit on the box to make sure I never feed the grid on accident by forgetting to turn off the main before plugging in the generator, I'll be able to feed anything I want inside the house. Lights aren't a problem at 9watts a piece when you've got 2900 to play with. You'll see my house from space I'll have this place so lit up next time.

Once I install that inverter and marine battery setup my neighbor has, things will only get better. I'll never have to worry about voltage spikes on any of my sensitive equipment every time the sump pump starts up and draws 3 times the current for the first second or two. Even all oiled up and primed to go, I don't need to be inside the house to know when the pump is going off because the generator is telling me all I need to know. You can feel that initial spike and the overtime it's working until the pump shuts off.

There's a very good chance at only 2200 watts, his generator couldn't even handle the starting wattage of a 1/2hp to 1hp pump that wasn't well designed. But he never directly feeds it at all. He's got the batteries charging when they need to be charged, and the pump runs off of that. He's only got two marine batteries, but he said he could add as many as he wanted to the bank, and after this storm he intends to do just that.

Another of my neighbors just bought his first generator. I found out yesterday he also has a battery that he charges with solar panels and made some good use out of that too, but it just wasn't enough and he he got himself a Harbor Freight generator that claims to be 4000 watts.

Don't do that. I just looked up the prices and I'm shocked to see how cheap DeWalt generators are in 2026. I would have figured that an equivalent to my model had to be over $1000 today, but that couldn't be further from the truth. My 2900 watt model is only stating the Starting Wattage, which is the extra capacity it has to handle power spikes like pumps for short bursts of time. The actual Running Wattage is only 2,400 watts. I'm looking at Home Depot right now and you can get a 5000/4000 watt DeWalt with a 3.4 gallon tank for only $729!!!

I'll tell you what... After what I just went through, anybody and I mean ANYBODY who owns a home is a fool not to have one of their own. I'm not joking. I'm not being cute. When I get my plug on my house, I just might buy a new generator and be able to do literally everything I would have already been doing even when the power is out. For $1,100, I could have a 8,125/6,000 watt genny with a 7.5 gallon tank and power the lives of mine and my next door neighbors as if the power never went out. For only $100 more, I could have a 10,000/8,000 watter with 7.5 gallon tank.

Who knows? Maybe 22 years ago my little 2,900/2,400 watter was a top of the line piece for DeWalt? Seriously Sigs... Don't sleep on it. Just spend the money and get one. Get a DeWalt. Don't mess with the Harbor Freight or Costco specials on this. I know a lot of people who have, and I'm not going to be the guy to shit all over their parade, but they're risking a whole lot to save a couple of hundred bucks.


I fully intend to take pictures of and take many notes of both the inverter/marine battery setup in the one house as well as the solar panel/battery setup in the other house once things settle down around here and I get a couple of other things handled and I'm ready to work on it. I figure I'm looking at about a $1,200 investment to start it off, but that will give me 2 or maybe even 3 marine batteries, and unlike a Basement Watchdog system for $600, all of this is modular and anything that fails can be easily and cheaply replaced instead of throwing the whole thing out and buying a new one.

Start with the genny. Build from there. You've already got a whole roof full of solar panels. If you get yourself set up with a good marine battery array like my neighbor has, you can probably charge up those things quite a bit during your own 2 week outage, but on those days where the sun just won't peek out, there ain't nothing like running everything you need off of gas.

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SIGNY
can't imagine why your neighbor isn't talking to you. Taking down that tree saved both of you from a lot of damage. They should be THANKING you. Sheesh!

SIX:
I think I may have come at them a little too hard, honestly. I can be a hot head sometimes and in 15 years I don't think either of them have ever seen that side of me before that day. I wasn't raising my voice with brows furrowed or anything, but I left my usual cheery demeanor mask on the floor at my bed and just told them what the facts were and what the future held if some potential future played out. If anything, I imagine there's much deeper feelings involved too. I don't work. They know I don't work. They both work full time jobs and have two kids to raise. They buy a whole bunch of shit that they don't need and likely don't actually Own any of the things worth over $20,000 that the bank actually owns. And here I am telling them I don't have insurance and they're going to have to pay for my house getting destroyed if their tree falls on it. I can't imagine if the roles were reversed that I would be very happy to have that news blindside me 2 days into a power outage either.

I hope she gets over it. Her husband hasn't talked to me either since trying to get me to pay for half of the job again, but I think that's more about just not creating any waves at home than anything else. I've done a lot for them over the years, like saving their garage, and letting them borrow my mower for the back half of a summer, and helping them move a ton of furniture when they were having their floors remodeled, and capping off their gas on their stove and fixing a leaky valve on their sink when they were having the kitchen remodeled. They've given me about 6 free meals and a $25 card in the same time. Who's the one losing out here?

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SIGNY
So, gotta say ... NOW do you think global climate change might be a real thing? Just bc TPTB treat it like a "get rich quick/ consolidate even MORE power" opportunity doesn't mean it isn't happening.

SIX
Sigs... I give everything 50/50. If I can't give God more than that, I'm sure as shit not going to give it to the climate changers or the deniers.

I dunno. Whatever... It's not like there is anything that I could ever do or say that is going to change the trajectory that we're on, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

I just lived through what most people (including myself 2 weeks ago) would consider hell on earth for 12 days and was having fun by the end of it.

If this becomes our new normal, I'm going to be the most prepared of anybody for it. Not just with my new setup, but mentally as well.

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I hope climate change isn't real. But as long as the water doesn't evaporate and we're not all catching on fire, I'm not worried that I'm going to have any problems surviving it. I learned a lot of good lessons this time that I'm not going to ever forget. And no better time than right now to make all the adjustments and preparations I need to make sure the next time, when I likely have a job I can't go AWOL on for two weeks, it will hardly be an inconvenience.

But 50/50 split or not, I don't really give a shit. Because the only people who ever actually follow any of the rules we make are ourselves, and we've made our labor completely unaffordable to ourselves and the rest of the world in doing so. I don't want to hear about it.

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Until everybody stops buying shit they don't need; Until companies worldwide are FORCED to make good products that might cost more but will last a lifetime like they used to and they stop selling us purposely disposable shit, and until somebody convinces China and India and everywhere else to play by the same planet-saving rules that the US and EU abide, I don't want to hear about it.

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SIGNY
Anyway... the heat this summer has been relentless. I think we had all of three or four days in the past two months below 88. So I've been doing work inside, decluttering and holding dear daughter's feet to the fire and the house does look visibly better. Still quite a ways to go but happy with the results so far.

Yeah... It was pretty bad here, but not nearly as hot as by you. The humidity up until a few days ago here was the killer this year. I put out all my horses in the basement to hang my soggy clothes on (either head to toe sweat or from working out in the rain), and 4 days later they were still wet and started to stink and there was nothing I could do about it but wait. The air was saturated and there was nowhere for the moisture to go.

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SIX
Glad you're getting work done inside the house and staying out of that heat. When you work with DD on things like this does she understand why she should be doing what you're telling her she needs to do and that she should continue to do that regularly so it's not a major project when it gets done? I ask, because as a single man who regularly does that to himself, it can be debilitating. When I keep up with things and everything is clean around me, I feel a lot better about life in general. But when I immerse myself so deeply into projects to the exclusion of nearly everything else in life including regular chores, my overall outlook on life in general takes a real negative turn along with it. It's like my insides become a reflection of what I've chosen to make my space look like.

Forgive me for imposing, and I don't mean any judgement or want to make you feel like you need to be on the defensive. But I think it's important to consider that aspect of your situation with DD if you haven't already. I'm coming at that conclusion simply from remembering how my mom and step-dad never had any patience and never actually explained anything to me or why I should do any of it. The phrases "Because" and "Do as I say, not as I do" were frequent in the vernacular of Hell House.

But I was kicked out when I was 19, and though it's been absent almost everywhere else in my life ever since, fortune smiled upon me and gave me a solid enough head on my shoulders to learn all the lessons I never did as a kid, many of them in just about the hardest way possible, and somehow come out the other end of it alive.

DD's going to need those lessons for herself someday. I don't know what her strengths and weakness are, but I do get the feeling that perhaps she wouldn't be able to learn some lessons like this on her own without somebody she trusts to explain them to her in a way that makes sense to her, and that she will carry with her for the rest of her life. It's not even about learning lessons, exactly... It's the ability of being able to make that correlation between one's own depression and the state they keep their living quarters in, and how they can both be two polar ends of a downward spiral that just continues to feed itself if you can't find a way to shake yourself out of it.

And perhaps with you around to clean up the place and be the boss, she's never really even had to consider it all that much because I don't imagine you've ever let your home become anywhere close to uninhabitable as I've allowed my own space to become with no good woman around to kick my ass when I get out of line.



These are just things I suggest you mull over because I know a thing or two about depression and I've spent a very long time questioning what triggers it. Evaluating and always reevaluating things and finding where the lines positively and negatively correlate and where they intersect.

I don't think many people in general do this.

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SIX
And the new data points I've gotten this summer with 15+ total days of no power or internet are astounding additions to the experiment.

I can't go to sleep again. Drinking or no, it just ain't no good.

I can do my computer projects. I can do my house projects. But I need to find a job and I especially need to be much more diligent in keeping up the few relationships I have that really mean something to me. There needs to be balance.

DD probably isn't going to have grand projects to balance and hopefully she will never have any heavy expectations hung on her that she needs to balance with the rest of her life, but just those little things like cleaning up after yourself and throwing away or gifting things you no longer have any use for (especially if it's literal trash), things that come so naturally to you and things that you can always get her to do when they get out of hand are just so important. And nobody ever told me any of that growing up. I missed the life of my half and step-brother who had a stay at home mom that went to every sporting event and academic event and play, and they all came home to an immaculately clean house which save for a few paint jobs or a new floor job here or there has looked identical every single time I've ever walked into it without a speck of dust or a single piece of paper out of place. I got a brother with what would be life ruining debilitation from OCD for anybody who didn't understand string theory and can't charge $300 per hour to tutor college kids on video calls out of that deal, so who's to say who had it better or worse?

I feel very much like you're in the healthy middle there. You're not 1,000% all the time, or even if you are, you don't demand that of your family while you're running circles around them all day long. And yet you don't let DD get off scot-free and you do try to teach her lessons while enforcing rules and keeping the place up to a level worthy of human habitation.

But if you feel that some of the lessons might not be sticking and you find yourself having to teach the same lessons over again, with or without pushback, maybe it's time to change tack a bit and do some experimentation.

Personally, I don't believe it's a scenario that benefits from either the carrot or the stick. Scolding her and making her feel bad or shamed for her behavior will have results, but none of them are going to be good in the end. Bribing or otherwise "rewarding" good behavior is just as bad for different reasons. I'm thinking "Long Term" about this when I say that. It works. For now.

Is she capable of understanding the correlation between a lack of cleanliness and order, and depression? Do you feel that it would be possible to instill a sense of pride in herself for doing things like this? Not because you asked her to do them, but because she just did them because it was the right thing to do, and it will make her happier to live in a place like the one that you keep rather than one that resembles the place that I keep until it drives me crazy and I spend a whole week or even two putting everything back together again?

If you believe yes to all of the above, I think you need to work on how to get her to grasp all of that and embrace it.


Like I said, Sigs... I hope you don't take any of that personally and that you're not offended by any of it. I'm only trying to be helpful and come at this from a vantage point that you may have not ever thought to look at it from.

And I know we can both be real bitches to each other sometimes, but I kind of love ya at the same time. We don't even know each other's real names and likely never will, but after all these years you are just about as much of my life as some of my real life connections.

I want to see your daughter succeed, and I know that is what you want for her too.

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SIGNY
So relieved that you're OK!

SIX
That's really nice of you to say.

I'm glad the site is still up and it didn't finally disappear when I was gone. I knew you and Brenda would be worried and wondering with all the news on TV. But aside from a few minor snags in the first couple of days, everything was fine. Better than fine, actually.

Sorry to keep you both worrying for so long. 12 days feels like an eternity when you're not drowning in life's modern trappings. I can only hope they went by faster for you.

I think that's what I'm going to miss the most, now that the power is back on.

Two weeks felt almost like 2 years. So much happened around me, I made so much happen, and every day was almost entirely different from the last.

I can't go back to sleep...

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Heya SIX!
Glad you're OK!

SIX:
Hey Sigs. You too. I trust you're staying out of that heat as much as possible.

SIGNY:
12 days without power? That's ridiculous! But thank goodness for the genny! We keep toying with the idea of battery backup but a generator is probably a much cheaper and better bet.

SIX:
Yeah... Insane, really. But the crazy part about it was after 3 or 4 days it just became my new normal. That first night I was setting my alarm every 2 hours to check on the generator, and I know I didn't get to sleep until at least 4AM the first couple of nights. By around night 9 I was falling asleep watching movies well before midnight. Part of that was I was pretty sure by then anyone who needed a generator either bought one or stole one and I was in the clear. NWI is probably now the most prepared portion of the country for the next storm in the history of the nation. Not just because of this event, but the one that knocked out 1/3rd of the same customers for 3 to 5 days just 6 or so weeks ago. If they didn't learn their lesson the first time, they sure better have the second time or they get what they deserve the third time.

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SIX:
Get yourself a generator first. It's a no-brainier. But don't forget you need a few extension cords that are up to the task too. I probably went super overboard when I bought a 100ft cord that came out to more than a buck a foot after taxes for my sump well, but I'll never lose sleep worrying that it's going to melt on me. Until day 2 of the last power outage I would never have even dared to try to hook up the fridge on a plain orange 100ft extension cord, but I had to save the insulin and found it it wasn't a problem.

This time I was able to rotate that orange plug and do quite a few things with it. First and foremost, making coffee is no longer an issue whether my power is up or not.

I had it powering my laptop and charging my phones and my Ryobi batteries on my 6-battery charger every 2 or 3 nights just to keep everything topped off. No more sitting in my car reading a book for a few hours while the phone and my diabetes monitor charged up. No more worrying about what I was going to do when my 12 batteries for my flashlights inevitably ran out of juice long before the power came back up.

I had my Dad take all my insulin in an iced up cooler back to his place for me and just kept my existing bottle and the one I'd be opening soon, and I didn't have all that much food so I just threw out the stuff I couldn't cook, ate what I could eat and had that thing shut off after day 2. I'm sure I could have run the fridge and sump and still do everything else I was doing without overloading the generator, but with only 2 A/C outlets on the thing, it would have meant taking the fridge off of the plug for hours at a time, and I probalby wouldn't have watched any movies and would have had the plug split in the kitchen charging everything up overnight while feeding the fridge if I didn't give the insulin to Dad.

They're not cheap, but if you get yourself a nice one and follow the maintenance instructions, you will get years of use and piece of mind out of it. JUST MAKE SURE YOU ALWAYS HAVE ENOUGH GAS ON HAND FOR A FEW DAYS!!!! Ask me how I know.

Mine isn't huge or an especially large energy export at only 3 gallon capacity and 2900 watts, but it was a DeWalt that was built 24 years ago and still kicks ass to this day. I've gone several years without ever firing it up, and it always starts in a few pulls if not the first pull.

And once I install that house generator R/V style plug with the interlock kit on the box to make sure I never feed the grid on accident by forgetting to turn off the main before plugging in the generator, I'll be able to feed anything I want inside the house. Lights aren't a problem at 9watts a piece when you've got 2900 to play with. You'll see my house from space I'll have this place so lit up next time.

Once I install that inverter and marine battery setup my neighbor has, things will only get better. I'll never have to worry about voltage spikes on any of my sensitive equipment every time the sump pump starts up and draws 3 times the current for the first second or two. Even all oiled up and primed to go, I don't need to be inside the house to know when the pump is going off because the generator is telling me all I need to know. You can feel that initial spike and the overtime it's working until the pump shuts off.

There's a very good chance at only 2200 watts, his generator couldn't even handle the starting wattage of a 1/2hp to 1hp pump that wasn't well designed. But he never directly feeds it at all. He's got the batteries charging when they need to be charged, and the pump runs off of that. He's only got two marine batteries, but he said he could add as many as he wanted to the bank, and after this storm he intends to do just that.

Another of my neighbors just bought his first generator. I found out yesterday he also has a battery that he charges with solar panels and made some good use out of that too, but it just wasn't enough and he he got himself a Harbor Freight generator that claims to be 4000 watts.

Don't do that. I just looked up the prices and I'm shocked to see how cheap DeWalt generators are in 2026. I would have figured that an equivalent to my model had to be over $1000 today, but that couldn't be further from the truth. My 2900 watt model is only stating the Starting Wattage, which is the extra capacity it has to handle power spikes like pumps for short bursts of time. The actual Running Wattage is only 2,400 watts. I'm looking at Home Depot right now and you can get a 5000/4000 watt DeWalt with a 3.4 gallon tank for only $729!!!

I'll tell you what... After what I just went through, anybody and I mean ANYBODY who owns a home is a fool not to have one of their own. I'm not joking. I'm not being cute. When I get my plug on my house, I just might buy a new generator and be able to do literally everything I would have already been doing even when the power is out. For $1,100, I could have a 8,125/6,000 watt genny with a 7.5 gallon tank and power the lives of mine and my next door neighbors as if the power never went out. For only $100 more, I could have a 10,000/8,000 watter with 7.5 gallon tank.

Who knows? Maybe 22 years ago my little 2,900/2,400 watter was a top of the line piece for DeWalt? Seriously Sigs... Don't sleep on it. Just spend the money and get one. Get a DeWalt. Don't mess with the Harbor Freight or Costco specials on this. I know a lot of people who have, and I'm not going to be the guy to shit all over their parade, but they're risking a whole lot to save a couple of hundred bucks.


I fully intend to take pictures of and take many notes of both the inverter/marine battery setup in the one house as well as the solar panel/battery setup in the other house once things settle down around here and I get a couple of other things handled and I'm ready to work on it. I figure I'm looking at about a $1,200 investment to start it off, but that will give me 2 or maybe even 3 marine batteries, and unlike a Basement Watchdog system for $600, all of this is modular and anything that fails can be easily and cheaply replaced instead of throwing the whole thing out and buying a new one.

Start with the genny. Build from there. You've already got a whole roof full of solar panels. If you get yourself set up with a good marine battery array like my neighbor has, you can probably charge up those things quite a bit during your own 2 week outage, but on those days where the sun just won't peek out, there ain't nothing like running everything you need off of gas.

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SIGNY
can't imagine why your neighbor isn't talking to you. Taking down that tree saved both of you from a lot of damage. They should be THANKING you. Sheesh!

SIX:
I think I may have come at them a little too hard, honestly. I can be a hot head sometimes and in 15 years I don't think either of them have ever seen that side of me before that day. I wasn't raising my voice with brows furrowed or anything, but I left my usual cheery demeanor mask on the floor at my bed and just told them what the facts were and what the future held if some potential future played out. If anything, I imagine there's much deeper feelings involved too. I don't work. They know I don't work. They both work full time jobs and have two kids to raise. They buy a whole bunch of shit that they don't need and likely don't actually Own any of the things worth over $20,000 that the bank actually owns. And here I am telling them I don't have insurance and they're going to have to pay for my house getting destroyed if their tree falls on it. I can't imagine if the roles were reversed that I would be very happy to have that news blindside me 2 days into a power outage either.

I hope she gets over it. Her husband hasn't talked to me either since trying to get me to pay for half of the job again, but I think that's more about just not creating any waves at home than anything else. I've done a lot for them over the years, like saving their garage, and letting them borrow my mower for the back half of a summer, and helping them move a ton of furniture when they were having their floors remodeled, and capping off their gas on their stove and fixing a leaky valve on their sink when they were having the kitchen remodeled. They've given me about 6 free meals and a $25 card in the same time. Who's the one losing out here?

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SIGNY
So, gotta say ... NOW do you think global climate change might be a real thing? Just bc TPTB treat it like a "get rich quick/ consolidate even MORE power" opportunity doesn't mean it isn't happening.

SIX
Sigs... I give everything 50/50. If I can't give God more than that, I'm sure as shit not going to give it to the climate changers or the deniers.

I dunno. Whatever... It's not like there is anything that I could ever do or say that is going to change the trajectory that we're on, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

I just lived through what most people (including myself 2 weeks ago) would consider hell on earth for 12 days and was having fun by the end of it.

If this becomes our new normal, I'm going to be the most prepared of anybody for it. Not just with my new setup, but mentally as well.

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I hope climate change isn't real. But as long as the water doesn't evaporate and we're not all catching on fire, I'm not worried that I'm going to have any problems surviving it. I learned a lot of good lessons this time that I'm not going to ever forget. And no better time than right now to make all the adjustments and preparations I need to make sure the next time, when I likely have a job I can't go AWOL on for two weeks, it will hardly be an inconvenience.

But 50/50 split or not, I don't really give a shit. Because the only people who ever actually follow any of the rules we make are ourselves, and we've made our labor completely unaffordable to ourselves and the rest of the world in doing so. I don't want to hear about it.

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Until everybody stops buying shit they don't need; Until companies worldwide are FORCED to make good products that might cost more but will last a lifetime like they used to and they stop selling us purposely disposable shit, and until somebody convinces China and India and everywhere else to play by the same planet-saving rules that the US and EU abide, I don't want to hear about it.

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SIGNY
Anyway... the heat this summer has been relentless. I think we had all of three or four days in the past two months below 88. So I've been doing work inside, decluttering and holding dear daughter's feet to the fire and the house does look visibly better. Still quite a ways to go but happy with the results so far.

Yeah... It was pretty bad here, but not nearly as hot as by you. The humidity up until a few days ago here was the killer this year. I put out all my horses in the basement to hang my soggy clothes on (either head to toe sweat or from working out in the rain), and 4 days later they were still wet and started to stink and there was nothing I could do about it but wait. The air was saturated and there was nowhere for the moisture to go.

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SIX
Glad you're getting work done inside the house and staying out of that heat. When you work with DD on things like this does she understand why she should be doing what you're telling her she needs to do and that she should continue to do that regularly so it's not a major project when it gets done? I ask, because as a single man who regularly does that to himself, it can be debilitating. When I keep up with things and everything is clean around me, I feel a lot better about life in general. But when I immerse myself so deeply into projects to the exclusion of nearly everything else in life including regular chores, my overall outlook on life in general takes a real negative turn along with it. It's like my insides become a reflection of what I've chosen to make my space look like.

Forgive me for imposing, and I don't mean any judgement or want to make you feel like you need to be on the defensive. But I think it's important to consider that aspect of your situation with DD if you haven't already. I'm coming at that conclusion simply from remembering how my mom and step-dad never had any patience and never actually explained anything to me or why I should do any of it. The phrases "Because" and "Do as I say, not as I do" were frequent in the vernacular of Hell House.

But I was kicked out when I was 19, and though it's been absent almost everywhere else in my life ever since, fortune smiled upon me and gave me a solid enough head on my shoulders to learn all the lessons I never did as a kid, many of them in just about the hardest way possible, and somehow come out the other end of it alive.

DD's going to need those lessons for herself someday. I don't know what her strengths and weakness are, but I do get the feeling that perhaps she wouldn't be able to learn some lessons like this on her own without somebody she trusts to explain them to her in a way that makes sense to her, and that she will carry with her for the rest of her life. It's not even about learning lessons, exactly... It's the ability of being able to make that correlation between one's own depression and the state they keep their living quarters in, and how they can both be two polar ends of a downward spiral that just continues to feed itself if you can't find a way to shake yourself out of it.

And perhaps with you around to clean up the place and be the boss, she's never really even had to consider it all that much because I don't imagine you've ever let your home become anywhere close to uninhabitable as I've allowed my own space to become with no good woman around to kick my ass when I get out of line.



These are just things I suggest you mull over because I know a thing or two about depression and I've spent a very long time questioning what triggers it. Evaluating and always reevaluating things and finding where the lines positively and negatively correlate and where they intersect.

I don't think many people in general do this.

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SIX
And the new data points I've gotten this summer with 15+ total days of no power or internet are astounding additions to the experiment.

I can't go to sleep again. Drinking or no, it just ain't no good.

I can do my computer projects. I can do my house projects. But I need to find a job and I especially need to be much more diligent in keeping up the few relationships I have that really mean something to me. There needs to be balance.

DD probably isn't going to have grand projects to balance and hopefully she will never have any heavy expectations hung on her that she needs to balance with the rest of her life, but just those little things like cleaning up after yourself and throwing away or gifting things you no longer have any use for (especially if it's literal trash), things that come so naturally to you and things that you can always get her to do when they get out of hand are just so important. And nobody ever told me any of that growing up. I missed the life of my half and step-brother who had a stay at home mom that went to every sporting event and academic event and play, and they all came home to an immaculately clean house which save for a few paint jobs or a new floor job here or there has looked identical every single time I've ever walked into it without a speck of dust or a single piece of paper out of place. I got a brother with what would be life ruining debilitation from OCD for anybody who didn't understand string theory and can't charge $300 per hour to tutor college kids on video calls out of that deal, so who's to say who had it better or worse?

I feel very much like you're in the healthy middle there. You're not 1,000% all the time, or even if you are, you don't demand that of your family while you're running circles around them all day long. And yet you don't let DD get off scot-free and you do try to teach her lessons while enforcing rules and keeping the place up to a level worthy of human habitation.

But if you feel that some of the lessons might not be sticking and you find yourself having to teach the same lessons over again, with or without pushback, maybe it's time to change tack a bit and do some experimentation.

Personally, I don't believe it's a scenario that benefits from either the carrot or the stick. Scolding her and making her feel bad or shamed for her behavior will have results, but none of them are going to be good in the end. Bribing or otherwise "rewarding" good behavior is just as bad for different reasons. I'm thinking "Long Term" about this when I say that. It works. For now.

Is she capable of understanding the correlation between a lack of cleanliness and order, and depression? Do you feel that it would be possible to instill a sense of pride in herself for doing things like this? Not because you asked her to do them, but because she just did them because it was the right thing to do, and it will make her happier to live in a place like the one that you keep rather than one that resembles the place that I keep until it drives me crazy and I spend a whole week or even two putting everything back together again?

If you believe yes to all of the above, I think you need to work on how to get her to grasp all of that and embrace it.


Like I said, Sigs... I hope you don't take any of that personally and that you're not offended by any of it. I'm only trying to be helpful and come at this from a vantage point that you may have not ever thought to look at it from.

And I know we can both be real bitches to each other sometimes, but I kind of love ya at the same time. We don't even know each other's real names and likely never will, but after all these years you are just about as much of my life as some of my real life connections.

I want to see your daughter succeed, and I know that is what you want for her too.

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SIGNY
So relieved that you're OK!

SIX
That's really nice of you to say.

I'm glad the site is still up and it didn't finally disappear when I was gone. I knew you and Brenda would be worried and wondering with all the news on TV. But aside from a few minor snags in the first couple of days, everything was fine. Better than fine, actually.

Sorry to keep you both worrying for so long. 12 days feels like an eternity when you're not drowning in life's modern trappings. I can only hope they went by faster for you.

I think that's what I'm going to miss the most, now that the power is back on.

Two weeks felt almost like 2 years. So much happened around me, I made so much happen, and every day was almost entirely different from the last.

I can't go back to sleep...

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