I survived the power out of 2014

What a wild 24 hours! Last night around 9:45pm as I was doing my bed time reading (buzzfeed) and chatting with some friends online, the lights and my fan cut out. The sudden silence startled me and I thought "uh oh". We have had a couple of power outs in the past few days so this blackout didn't come as a huge surprise immediately. The lights flickered a few minutes later but remained off. 

Having no cell reception or Internet connection, I couldn't communicate with the rest of my Wemindji friends to see how they were but one quick look out the window told me that the rest of the town was without power too. 

I had enough cell battery to last me through the night and still have an alarm so I wasn't too stressed about waking up in the morning. I talked on the landline to my mom for a while and then went to sleep. 

When I woke up at 6 this morning, the power was still out and it was COLD in my house. COLD. Almost nine hours of -20 temperature and winds had brought the temperature down drastically inside the house. The floors were cold. The rooms were cold. My feet were cold. The toilet seat was....cold. 

I got ready as usual, prepared for a sudden "power on". When the power goes off during school hours, we teachers are given an hour once the power returns to get ready to return to school. Since it was still early enough for the power to return before school hours, I figured I would just be ready for a regular day just incase. I took an extra long hot shower and got ready by candlelight! 

Around 7am I finally got some 3G reception and was able to talk to my friends and they were all also without power, cold and running out of battery life. So I picked them up and we drove around town for a while, attempting to charge our phones, make predictions for the day's possible events and get warm. 

We then returned to my house where we lit a fire in my handy wood burning stove, ate some candy and then real breakfast and chatted. We sat in my living room in coats for about 2 hours when the power turned back on around 9:30!!! We were both relieved and also a little disappointed. It was nice to have power but I'm not gonna lie, a day off work would also have been pretty fantastic. That being said, due to timing and what would undoubtedly been a freezing school, the morning was cancelled and I got to take a nap!! My favorite thing!! 

The afternoon was a scheduled PED day so we came back after lunch, excitedly ran down the morning's events in the hallways, did some teachery things and now I am home, toasty as a bagel in bed. Such adventures!

Notes for next power out:

- have portable emergency gadget charger actually charged...

- have food in the house that does not require cooking (aka bread or delicious chips)

- get a flashlight that is not on your phone (lots of candles but you know my luck with fire...)

- get more firewood

- get a metal camping pot to use on BBQ/wood burning stove

Before 

After