Back from hiatus

I am back in action. After two weeks of living in Marshfield with my parents (who have slow, slow dial-up Internet), I am now able to blog as usual.

Our power, like most others, went out Friday, Jan. 12 at 10:30 p.m. The snap, crackle, and pop of transformers, tree limbs, and power lines made for a huge mess that is still a mess in my front yard and most others in the region. Fortunately, the roads were never affected by our ice storm (which is quite unique in terms of a major winter storm), so we were able to make an escape to my parents' house on Saturday, Jan. 13; throughout the entire storm and following, unbelievably they were never without electricity and heat. Little did we know that our small backpacks wouldn't provide all we needed for our nearly two-week stay away from home.

Fast forward to Thursday, Jan. 25. After days of driving by my house to find that we still were without that precious commodity called electricity, there was a ray of light: a red pick-up with an out-of-town electric company's name on the side sitting next to my home. After the inevitable question ("When will I get electricity back?"), I was pessimistically excited to hear that a crew was on its way to our culdesac to repair the six houses still without power. Springfield is definitely a tree city, but after having my ginormous oak knock out lines coming into my house, I'm ready to move to a place with wide open spaces.

The two weeks without electricity wasn't too terrible for Rachel and me. The entire time, we stayed with my parents, ate too much (for fear that the power was going to go out and our blubber would diminish to nothing before we were able to cook again), and lived fairly normal lives. We are very grateful to my parents for allowing us to invade their lives, and I appreciate all their assistance with storm clean up that we have only just begun.

I have lots to accomplish — everything to storm debris clean-up to laundry — so I better run for now.

Oh, and if you're interested in viewing a medley of ice storm pictures, be sure to visit the Leah Savage Photography Blog.

Hasta pronto.