Monday, October 29, 2012

From the Lumberjack Storm Center



When you pretend to spend your days felling trees and skidding them down the mountain, you get used to bad weather. Rain, lightning, and limited access to Starbucks are just things you have to pretend to live with. So I wasn't much worried when I heard about Sandy.

Still, I did what was recommended: Filled the bathtub with water, in case a tree crashed into the house and I wanted to take a bath before going out to inspect it. Made sure we had lots of batteries in case the power went out and I wanted to throw batteries at the dogs in the dark. Wrapped the mail box in tinfoil; which will do no good, but it's fun to do to see if your neighbors will assume it's important and follow suit. (it takes a few storms for them to get the idea but once the first neighbor gets on board the whole thing snowballs - pretty soon the neighbor wives are hectoring the hubbies, "come on, there's a storm coming and you haven't even wrapped the mailbox yet.")

Which, storm hijinks, reminds me of something we did 30 years back... We lived in an area that lost power every time a sparrow passed gas. So we got used to having candles at the ready. Well one power outage happened just hours after I came home with a years supply of batteries and a new 5-D-cell Kel light. So I load up the light and turn it on. And Bam! the flashlight actually recoiled in my hands from the large volume of photons screaming out of the other end.

See, the Kel Light started out as a law enforcement tool. The idea was that you could wield it as a baton if the need arose. But police quickly learned that its real value lay in its ability to lobotomize with light. Look right into the business end of a Kel Light with fresh batteries and you won't see anything but white until your next birthday. And no use closing you eyes; the Kel Light can burn right through eyelids.

Anyway the lumberwife's sister lived three houses down from us so I loaded up all available flashlights and aimed them at the windows. The house not only looked like it still had power, it looked like it might possibly have a UFO parked in the living room.

Anyway, when the whole place was illuminated I put on a pair of sunglasses and called the in-laws. "Hey, did your lights just flicker?" I says, "I sure hope we don't lose power again."

"What you mean? The power has been out for the last hour."

So I feigned amazement and proceeded to tell the in-laws about all the appliances that were running just fine at our house. "Oh yeah, you want to store anything in our fridge? It seems unfair that we're the only ones with lights..."

For about five minutes I had them completely convinced that the laws of electrical transmission didn't apply at my house. It was great fun. Well, until the Kel Light set the drapes on fire from across the room.

Ah, good times.

Have a safe storm everyone. Lumberbrudi sent me this, heed its warning:




***Update: Someone for the love of God contact FEMA, we're running low on ice.

***Update II: Course, I know that some people must be having really bad days right now... Our prayers are with them.


picture - found on the internet

2 comments:

Surellin said...

Great story - I passed it along to a couple of friends, since we have all been flashlight-conscious these past few days. I wonder how many LEDs it would take to match a Kel - you'd probably need a light dome the size of a pie plate.

Veeshir said...

Wrapped the mail box in tinfoil; which will do no good, but it's fun to do to see if your neighbors will assume it's important and follow suit. (it takes a few storms for them to get the idea but once the first neighbor gets on board the whole thing snowballs - pretty soon the neighbor wives are hectoring the hubbies, "come on, there's a storm coming and you haven't even wrapped the mailbox yet.")

Okay, that's awesome. If I ever live in a neighborhood again, I'm gonna do that.
Of course, since I live in AZ I'm not going to see all that many major storms.

Does it work for sand storms as well?

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