2008-09-16

We are settling in well with the power-out emergency now. The weather has been a spectacular help, neither too hot in the daytime nor too cool at night for comfort. We’re blessed with a gas cook-top, so we can cook food here at home, and with the L’s extension cord running our fridge, we have our food supplies handy. Our one light gets a whole lot of use!

And last night Romi set my laptop to an internet dial-up connection. While I cannot write the article on hierarchies I had planned for this week, since it would be too costly to access the internet for key-word searches, I can post this Camelot Journal entry now and work on my current editing projects. And I will write an article about this storm, I think, this week instead.

After Morning Offering, Mick and Gary set out to do a very full round of lawn service, which today consisted almost entirely of storm debris clean-up. He said that two of his customers had utter devastation on their acreage. They took a total of four huge trailer-loads of limbs and other tree debris to their favorite tree service place - it accepts such materials for a fee per dump. And they came home elated, having accomplished far more than Mick had dared to hope. They also came home very weary!

I had to ration my work time today because of the nerve pain in my left arm. So I was not as productive as I had hoped. But I did write a long journal entry covering the last two days and got that posted after Romi set me up to access the internet in the evening. I also worked for a while on editing the song-and-story tape, The Journey. And I wrote a long and thoughtful letter to a beloved friend on a topic that we had between us. That felt really good! I had to send the letter to Romi so that he could print it out! Right now we do not have a printer handy.

There are still 200,000 customers out of power in our fair city! Still, this means that the power company has gotten 300,000+ customers back on line. Perhaps it won’t be a full three weeks that we’re out of power! Maybe we can hope to be back on line in a fortnight.

After we took a still slightly warm shower together – praise the Lord for well-insulated water heaters – Mick and I enjoyed a lovely date which revitalized us both thoroughly. It was the best I felt all day by far! We then visited with Romi and Gary over a late supper. Romi, whose power never did go out, offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.