It’s Halloween! When my favorite nights of the year… Brings back so many great memories trick-or-treating with the kids eating candy…

Mostly eating candy

 

We’re coming up on 48 hours without power. We got an email today saying that power would probably not be restored until Thursday night… Makes it the longest black out we’ve had since I’ve lived here in 36 years. The interesting thing is all of her neighbors have power… It’s just a narrow strip of us that don’t. Not sure how we lucked out

It’s still fun playing caveman… Heating with wood. Taking sponge baths in the sink… Eating canned food. I for one will welcome back… The not so warm glow of LED lights

Tonight was fun. As our recent tradition, we went and took our young friend fin out trick-or-treating. It’s a great excuse to eat peanut butter cups and look like would be grandparents

The great thing is we can get fin riled up on candy and then drop them off with his mom

 

OK… Sorry for the short post but we’re on our batteries here. Leaving early tomorrow

Night all night Sam
– Me

Greetings from the dark. We’re coming up on 20 hours without power. There were tremendous wind storms last night and the power went out around 2AM.  it went off and on a bunch of times each time setting off a strong of beeps and blinks as things around the house tried to restart.. only to blink off wit h the next interruption. Finally it gave up and everything was dark and silent. all we could hear was the wind. it was wonderful.. 

we woke to news that nearly 100,000 people in vermont (about 1/6th the population) were without power ..

it was still dark.. so i ended up shaving by flashlight 

I had an 8AM meeting downtown for Genrator.. there the coty looked normal, but by 9:30 back in richmond it was earily  quiet.. even our one traffic light in town was dark.. 

i managed to work a normal day thanks to lots of charged power packs and my phone as a wifi hotspot. . I had a couple of important meeting midday when my power reserves were running low.. so I quickly rigged up a car battery and inverter in my office.. .. it looked pretty Colony-esque

 

 

i even got the printer hooked up and networked through my phone 

 

arund 5 pm the power came back on for 20 min..  long enough for us to wash dishes, (we have no water without power !) .. 

but then it dropped again. Diane was doing Spooky Yoga for Halloween.. so we rigged up soem battery power for the music.. and used candles.. itset a great mood for the class. 

 

 

after class gabe, diane and I came inside and cooked pumpkin ravioli by candlelight.. thank goodness for gas stoves !

 

the power is still off. the power guys are out tryign to get everyoen hooked back up. I can see lights down the street which is encouraging. Friend debra got email from green moutnian power that it may take 3-4 days for her to get power again.. thats pretty hard.. I hope ours comes back before then. 

for now we are keeping our freezer shut.. and flushing the toilets with water from the pool.. 

for now it’s kinda cool…

emphasis on ‘kinda’..

nite all, nite sam

-me

Nice rainy Sunday. Had to spend most of it working.. but did manage to get out for a soggy run with Diane and the girls. The big plan for the day was to recreate our rainy sunday cream teas from when we lived in the UK.  Yesterday we picked up some wonderful scones from Debra when we went to wish her a happy birthday. TOday I ran out to the store and got the ingredients for our home made attempt at clotted cream. If you’ve never had clotted cream, you should.There’s no substitute for the real thing.. but it isn’t widely available here.. so we found a pretty good replacement using whipped heavy cream, a bit of sour cream and a tiny bit of sugar. Diane pulled it all together..along with her wonderful homemade masala chai  

It was the perfect work break.. I wnet into my Sunday night meeting (ugh)  happy and full 

November has lots of rainy Sundays.. I’m kind of looking forward to them now !

nite all, nite sam

-me

I realized tonight that this would have been the night we had our annual halloween party… it didn’t make me sad that we weren’t having it.. brought back very good memories of all the great parties we did have .. I’m tryign to think of how many we had.. I know I ‘inherited’ the parties when I baught the house in 1981… I know we had them up until 2006.. right before Sam died.. and then we had a few more after .. i think maybe 4 . Substract 2 years for england and 3 years for grad school ..(though the rentors held parties those years)  maybe thats 25 years of parties give or take.. Some were huge.. I think the biggest I ever counted was about 320 people.. most  were more contained. .. like 150-200 people. we had bands, fires, car chases (really).. lobsters.. and sooooo much fun.. Looking for a few examples back in my blog 

Sunday night – nice sized party

Saturday night – Halloween prep

tonight the house is dark and peaceful  thanks to all the folks that made these parties great ! they were a ton of work.. and a ton of fun. 

 

 My peaceful day was  Wonderful day at home wiht diane and the doggies . Took an early morning run in the woods up honey hollow and down catamount.. 

 

 

i love these woods.. so greatful to have them to run in 

 

then we took lunch t Deb at work for her birthday.. (with flowwers from Brit) \

 

picked up some yummie treats while tehre 

 

this evening we car pooled with Lou and Kathy ov3r to Sandy nd Michaels. We haden’t sewen the in a while. Sandy got out her photo album and we looked at pictures of us from the nid 80]s . some hlloween ones in there !

 

sandy, someone and lou

 

michael and lou 

all of us as penguins

 

lou

 

 

diane and me .. (yes.. thats really me :-))

 

ahh.. our good freind Jay who died last Feb… miss him

 

diane and me again !

\\

 

on a ski trip all together.. I still have that night shirt.. ccheck out that hair !

 

sandy and micahel 

 

here we are today 

 

trading kid pics 

 

beleive it or not, Sandy and micahel still had their penguin outfits !

 

nice nite.. nice friends

nice memories

 

nite all, nite sam

-me