Not sure what made me do it

So last night on the way home I stopped at the gas station to grab another 10 gallons of gas to power our generator set up for another 24 hours.  I was trying to use up some of our stockpile when I was told we should have power by Monday morning, but since that fell through I had figured I needed to keep ahead of the curve.

As I turned back our street I heard the familiar sound of generators drowning out most everything else.  When I entered our driveway for some reason I got a weird urge to hit the garage door opener in the Tacoma, even though I knew it wouldn’t work.  Imagine my excitement when the door started to go up, holy shit, the power is back on….

Elsa shared my excitement when I came in the door, Cindy was teaching a class and had no idea the lights were back on.  I wasted no time buzzing around the house undoing the tons of no power fixes I put in place over the the last nine days.  I was still actively undoing when Cindy got home and kept going until daylight was pretty much gone.  I got things pretty cleaned up but there will be more to do tonight.

Last night I left the big generator run one last time until it emptied the gas tank, making it more ready for storage.  In a strange way it will feel a little weird to not have the sound of a four stroke engine buzzing all night long.  This nine days post Irma have been filled with challenges that Cindy and I have tackled one at a time.  Through some creative efforts and considerable expenditure of cash our daily living without utility power got better over time.  I never expected us to be dark for this long, close to triple what we were for Wilma in 2005.

Going through situations like this certainly are character builders and make you appreciate the things you normally take for granted on a daily basis.  Now that the initial wave of physical discomfort is passing I now get to tackle the job of damage remediation head on.  Dealing with adjusters, contractors and insurance companies will be a whole different type of pain.