The Odyssey Continues

Day Five.
Overnight, at 2:00 a.m it will be 120 hours that we have been without electricity from the grid. National Grid’s “Outages by County” webpage still shows 26,362 households in Worcester County alone, still without power. They are targeting tomorrow evening, just before midnight, as the estimated time for restoration to be completed. Having driven through a number of towns, we’ve seen that all of the crews have been doing an amazing job of undoing the damage Mother Nature wrought in just a few hours. Tonight, as we did last night, when we shut down the generator we will switch the main back on. We’d hate to miss the power being restored! (With the main circuit breaker off, there is no possibility that the electricity created by our generator, can flow out over the lines and into the grid, thereby putting utility line workers at risk.) But if all is still quiet in the morning, we will carefully shut off the main and switch the generator back on.

This afternoon I suddenly realized that Christmas is just a week and a day away and Chanukah begins at sundown this Sunday the 21st! Yikes! Between the two week visit to Washington and this most recent adventure, the holidays have been very far from my mind. So this afternoon, with the aid of the generator, we began printing our holiday cards. With any luck at all, the post office will have some bright and cheerful stamps left and we can get the cards on their way. After that, I need to make a list - a long list I fear, of things still to be done!