Electricity appreciated anew

Thankfully our electricity was returned early this morning after having been out since Saturday afternoon.  It is amazing how dependent on electricity we are.  Hurricane Irene went through and knocked out the electricity to 85% of our little city.  The schools are still without electricity as our several of the stop lights in town and so driving through can still be tricky as it appears that many folks either don't know or don't care that when the lights aren't working (totally blank) that the intersection becomes a four way stop.  So those who chug on through without stopping make them a bit hazardous. 

We made it through a couple of warm nights, moving down tot he bottom floor to get as cool as we could.  Charging cell phones and kindle's can be a challenge in these times.  But thanks to some kindnesses we had some ice for cool drinks yesterday (who knew ice is one thing we would really miss) and a generator to keep our refrigerator going.  Some stores are open doing a bang up business and others are closed with no electricity.  It feels like the "haves" and "have nots" with who has electricity and who doesn't. 

We drove around the city and noticed lots of tree limbs down and some trees.  A few electric lines torn down from the falling trees.  All-n-all it will be a mess for those whose electricity is out due to trees down.  We felt like celebrating when the electricity on and turned on the air conditioning and went back to our comfortable water bed for the rest of the night!  That's what is going for excitement around here. 

On my way to work I had to drive around in Hopewell and saw they seemed a little worse off then our little town.  We are hearing that at least one school system has pushed the start of school back one week and it is still a challenge to find gasoline and ice without waiting in lengthy lines.  I'm glad that we had two cars full of gas when the hurricane came.