Quarantine Day 48

Day 48…… well, actually today is day 49, but last night we lost power, and I wasn’t able to post anything. The day was like any other day during our pandemic. We knew that there were thunderstorms coming in the evening, which is not uncommon. Once it hit 4:30 pm, the wind started picking up at a wild pace! We watched as everything on our back deck started spinning! Little AoA always keeps an emergency storm bag in the hallway, which definitely comes in handy! The power went off….the whole family went to the hallway to wait until the sound of wind stopped. There had been no tornado warnings or high wind warnings.

As time passed into the evening, the power still wasn’t back on. A quick look at local Facebook pages, and I saw that much of our town was without power. My teenager freaked out a bit, because they needed to be online at 6:00 to moderate a discord site that was hosting an interview with Tyler Joseph of 21 Pilots!

We needed a plan! With COVID-19, not much is open right now, so I really did some searching. I called a deli where people can sit and work while eating, to see if they had power and an open dining room. They did! I packed up my laptops, face masks, and Clorox wipes, and headed to town with my teen. It seemed that there were some issues leading up to the interview. One of the site managers had lost internet connection, and one besides us, had lost power. Everyone went to plan B, and the server was running well. They only let people know one hour ahead of time about the interview, and that was enough to lead 1000 people to a single server that usually has about 50 or fewer people on it! They also streamed live to Facebook, which is what I had running, as my teen sat across from me, moderating the server. That was a very cool experience!

We went home after that….still no power. I set the teen up with the car, so they could sit in the car and use a device. Little AoA and I went to bed and tried our best to sleep. When morning came, still no power. I went with my teen to pick up breakfast for everyone. When we got home, we made plans to drive around for a while rather than sit in our powerless house. Luckily, the minute we left, power was restored! We did better staying home with COVID-19 than without power. I am more thankful for power than I realized.

As news started coming out, it revealed that straight line winds around 70mph is what hit our Middle Tennessee area. In Nashville, 130,000 people were without power, and some may be without it for up to five days! To put it into perspective, when the devastating tornados hit about a month ago, power was lost at 50,000 homes. There are trees uprooted, and power lines down everywhere. This picture is from a neighborhood just up the road from me…