Tick Tock, Tick Tock...

: : Nearly all the holiday cards are out the door and safely in the mail. There are just a few we need to confirm addresses for.
: : We chose the “Celebrate” stamps.
: : Still no electricity from the grid. Sigh... But the damage assessment teams came by earlier today doing their “bird-dogging”. And later, the tree crews came down one side of the street, but never made it back up the other side as we had been told they would. (But if you’ve been following me on Twitter, you already knew all that!)
: : As of this posting, National Grid is reporting 17,425 households in Worcester County still without power. Today’s snow and ice slowed things down and complicated the repairs. The new estimated restoration for our town has been pushed to just before midnight, Thursday, December 18th.
: : Over the years, we’ve had many different headlamps. They used to be heavy and awkward with enormous battery packs you had to clip to a belt. Now we have Petzl headlamps. They are super light with extremely comfortable headbands. Chuck’s is the Tikka XP. Mine is the older TacTikka Plus. Both have very bright, easily adjustable lights. We recommend them.
: : Our generator continues to plug away and we are getting quite used to the constant thrumming and roar of its engine. But whenever we shut it off, the silence is welcome. We also remain very grateful that we happened upon it and were able to buy it. We’ll tip over the 144 hours without electricity mark overnight at 2:00 a.m. Without the generator, we would have been sunk.