Today certainly started out ordinary enough; turned on us a bit though. While driving my kids to school, a volunteer emergency service vehicle went flying by as i pulled off to the side of the road. Later this afternoon, i found out that a young amish man was injured by an exploding propane tank that hit him in the head. He needs our prayers.
Then, after the kids had been in school for an hour or so…we lost our electric. Then it came back on…then it went off again and stayed off. All thoughout town it was the same. The schools had a hard time of it. Fast food restaurants weren’t so fast…in fact…they weren’t open!
Some of our school buildings are old and dark. The high school dismissed because the upper levels of the school were completely dark. They tried to hang in for a while to see if it would come back on. It did…15 minutes after they dismissed the students.
In this day and age, everything is run by power. My husband couldn’t work here at home on his computer business. I couldn’t do alot of housecleaning…nor could i work on my blog or any of my other electronic writings. (Pen and paper still work though…believe it or not :))
This experience is a reminder though for all of us that we need to take precautions for unexpected emergencies. Have extra water on hand, cell phones (if you have them), food that can be prepared without heat or electric, gasoline, flashlights, kerosene, all manner of emergency items. I am glad to say that i was mostly prepared. Yeah for me!
On the other hand, i realized how really paralyzed we are as a nation when we loose our power. The town becomes almost frozen. The schools don’t know how to teach the children without the computers and all of the electronic devices we have come to depend on. I admit, i found it more than a little frustrating myself. We could all benefit from some back to basics here and there in our lives.
My parents have it going on. LOL….people think they are nuts to live out in the woods with a generator to power their electric…a hand pump for their water….wood stove for heat…..but let me tell you…when you are without the things that we all take for granted in 2007….it might not be such a bad idea!!!
Write where you are 
Yeah!!! for self sufficiency. We too depend on the water (rain) God sends us and pump it up to the house from tanks. We do have electricity – when it is out (which it is from time to time) we cook on our wood stove or our gas hob (or outside on the gas bar-b-q.) We have candles and gas lamps and the odd solar powered lights along the garden edge which is very nice and reassuring.
What I love about a power outage is that the stars are so much more visible. We live far away from a city but the light from cities is still to be seen on the horizon (a distraction I think!)
I have polished wooden floors which can still be washed, rugs that can still be beaten and no chores apart from washing that inconveniences me when the power is out. I do immensely dislike washing heavy things like towels or sheets.
Ellie
PS: This almost makes NZ sound backward – take my word for it. This is not so.