HAWS.NET

Word from KGHP is that we will not have power until at least Friday. We have not seen any crews in the area yet.
Well through total serendipity I was at Shuck’s Auto last night and heard the rep behind the counter say something like “We are usually open until 8, but we are staying open later tonight. We are waiting for a truck with generators..”. My ears perked up on that one… Long story short — I waited for the truck, and we now have a 3500 Watt Generator. The ONLY generator. Seems that even though they were expecting 8-10 of them, only one arrived on the truck and it’s now ours!

It’s a noisy SOB, so I ran it for 10 minutes last night, plugged in the entertainment center and watch TV for 30 seconds to make sure the wind did not put the dish out of alignment and then turned it off. Tonight when we get home… we are going to have heat AND power!

Note: Talking to one of the crew at Shuck’s he asked I lived. When I told him, he just whistled and said “Man, I heard that area just got NAILED!” I nodded my head and said “oh yeah”.

OK this is getting boring. Though I have to say I will never give Robin a bad time about Partylite ever again. Last night we went over to Barb and Gary’s to use their laundry and watch TV. We miss TiVo. Robin is running around with Barb and Natalie at Ikea today. Shopping for furniture for Natalie. I went to work today, of course we have power here. As of 4PM still no power at home (I called - phone service is back up) and no answering machine has picked up. I know that a lot of people have it worse off than we do, but damn I am so over this no power thing…

I think when the dust settles, I will be looking into a Natural Gas Generator for the house. So I’ll have more than the 150 Watts the inverter puts out.

It’s starting to feel more like Jericho than Gig Harbor Around here… Still no power. We cleaned out the refrigerator and freezer yesterday and packed what we could save in a pair of ice chests in the back yard. Since it’s cold outside, figured it would last longer there.

Barb and Gary called this morning, they have power! This gives us hope. However the damage to the lines in our area are extensive to say the least. We have not seen any crews working in our area. I will try and get some photos posted.

So Barb and Gary are going to return the favor.. so tonight we are having dinner over there.

Update: I just took a drive around the block and took some photos of the line damage around us. At least 3 snapped poles. No signs of a crew, which means at least a couple of more days of no power.

Well this morning we did our annual Santa Breakfast with my family. After both Mom and Jennifer got their power back.

We spent the afternoon cleaning the fridge of perishables and saving what we could with ice filled coolers.

Barb and Gary, like us, have no power. They have heat but no hot water or stove.

So they are bringing over dinner tonight, Omaha Steaks delivered to Gary on Thursday, Our BBQ has plenty of gas. They provide dinner, we let then have a hot shower, works for me!
I have a power inverter hooked up to the car to charge laptops and phones. Unfortunately it’s not powerful enough to run the espresso machine! it’s only a 150W and 15 amps worth.
We are still doing fine. The gas fireplace is heating the house “OK”. Our hot water heater is working. The gas stove works just fine. and the laptops are able to provide us with news from the outside world and play our DVD’s…

We hope that you are all as lucky. We will post more tomorrow.

Well as anyone local already knows, last night was a record wind storm. We lost power at around 1:00AM this morning. The wind was howling constantly last night. It sound like the freight train that goes through the narrows on a regular basis.

The Narrows bridge was closed from 12:30 AM until 6:00 AM this morning, just as I was leaving the home for the office. Outside it looks like it snowed fur trees. Branches everywhere. Two of the three routes to HWY16 from home were blocked by down trees and power poles.

Read a report that power on the peninsula may be out for several days.

Have been in contact with the Vorous , the Hoviks and the Haws’s, grandma Kuzmanich and everyone is OK.  Natalie reports that a tree came down on their neighbors home, and that there cul de sac was blocked by a downed tree. Our patio table blew over and the glass top is in shards all over the patio. Otherwise a quick inspection of our house showed no major damage this morning.
We have gas, so we are good for heat and cooking.Our cell phones are working. So between the cell phone and the laptop we can get and post information. HAWS.NET is up and running. So glad I am trying out this whole “hosting service” thing so that I can blog this.

We hope that you are all safe!

The world’s tallest man has saved two dolphins by using his long arms to reach into their stomachs and pull out dangerous plastic shards.

read more | digg story

Not sure what I am going to do after the Christmas season… I may have an idea now. Turn my macbook into a roomba controller…

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Linda at my office was in Portland, OR over the weekend. She visited the Portland Art Museum and the saw their current exhibit “The Quest for immortality“. I plan on going there in the next few months. Linda bought this calendar at the gift shop. It’s actually a companion to the book that Katie gave me for my birthday last year. So if you have not found anything for me for Christmas yet, you can find it here at Amazon.com.

Well the other week I went home with Karla’s keys because she started the van and I drove. Well today it was my turn, I was the first to get in the van so I started it, and waited for Jenni, knowing she wants has needs to drive, she has control issues ya know LOL. So anyways I’m five minutes out of Tacoma on the Sounder when Jenni calls… She has my keys. That explains why I’m here at SBUX in downtown Tacoma on a Friday night. I have to wait for Robin to Finish at work to come rescue me….

OK we all had our Nemesis in grade school. You have to admire the way this film maker worked it out.

Watch the youtube video