Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Cold comfort

Some East Marlborough friends who were out of power from Wednesday morning through Sunday morning reported that the lights were blazing the whole time at their neighbors' house across the street, which has a whole-house generator that clicks on automatically. What was especially vexing was that the neighbors were away the whole time, on vacation in Africa.
My friend adds that this lengthy power outage was the last straw: all the families in her area are getting together to see if they can negotiate a discount if they all buy their generators from one vendor.
Another friend whose farm was out of power for an equally long period of time said she didn't really need a thermostat to tell how cold it was inside her house: her Gummi candy became as hard as a rock. When the power returned, she could tell the HVAC was really cooking when the Gummi once again became pliable.
The day after everyone got their power back on, I was amused to see in my mailbox a catalog from an Ohio hardware store that featured an assortment of Feuerhand lanterns on the front cover. "Weather Any Storm," read the copy. "Perfect for When the Power Fails." How timely.

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