Did you know you can't use a cordless phone when the power's out?
And since I couldn't find my regular corded phone, I decided to just give her a ring back on my cell phone. Kurt and I sat around for a while before we realized we were hungry and decided to go forage for food downtown.
Most folks would probably have just opened the fridge quickly and gotten things for a sandwich. But when our power goes out, it could be days before it's back on again. Last winter our power was out for three solid days in the middle of February -- right during the SuperBowl, no less! So I didn't want to open the fridge just in case our power was out for that long once again.
As soon as we left our housing development, we found what had caused the power outage:
Downed power lines... never a good thing.
I'm still amazed that all of our power lines are aboveground when we have so many trees. You'd think they'd at least trim the trees around the power lines, but most of the time you can hardly see the poles for the power lines because they just blend into the rest of the forest around here. So downed power lines are just a way of life here come winter.
Fortunately the power was only out for about three and a half hours yesterday. We got home right around 5pm and I went about making dinner. I found this recipe from Allrecipes.com called Normal Chicken, which is simply three tablespoons of soy sauce with two tablespoons of worchestershire sauce spooned over four bone-in chicken breasts and baked for 50 minutes. Kurt was disturbed that I got away with making such an easy recipe. He thought it should be a bit more complicated.
Dinner was very yummy. The chicken was very juicy and tender, and the sauce was quite good spooned over the meat and some rice as well.
As soon as we finished our dinner, the lights went out again. By this time, it was stinkin' dark in the house. I couldn't see ANYTHING -- not even my hand in front of my face. I'm a bit afraid of the dark (go ahead, laugh... I'm used to it), so the complete darkness was no fun. I found my hurricane lamps and lit them, and then I was fine.
I was just thankful the lights went out AFTER we ate dinner! We have an electric stove, so we can't cook when the power is out. It would have been awful if the power had gone out when the breasts were just half-cooked!
So we went to Walmart to get out of the house. I could have sworn I saw another power line sparking in our neighborhood, but we never found a downed power line. That time the power was only out for about two hours, so we definitely lucked out yesterday.
Let's hope the power stays on for the rest of the winter!