OK here's the deal. In mid-August we took our semi-annual trip to
Pennsylvania Dutch territory to get our supply of the freshest and meats
that you would ever want to buy. And, at the same time we were able to spend
some time with the AHSTC Annual Encounter and visit with some great Healey
friends. Unfortunately we had to come home to face:
1. August 18 during a lightning storm, a bolt hit extremely close to our
house and fried the Verizon FiOS interconnect boxes. We were without
telephone, TV and Internet services until August 23 when those good folks
came back from strike and had to completely rebuild our system. Got a nice
credit that almost pays for the cell phone that I had to buy for my wife
when her old one went kaput.
2. Hurricane Irene hit four days later and on August 27 at 10:30 23 we lost
electrical power along with over 300,000 in New Jersey. We just got it back
today (31st) at 6:30pm. I opened my mailbox and found over 300 emails and a
lot of interesting conversations. Now you would think that these events are
a catastrophe. NOT. We learned that you can take an amazingly fast shower
when all you have is cold water. We learned that Dollar Store candles last
an awful long time (hardly made a dent in them). You can actually cook in a
chafing dish warmed with those little candles. It is no big deal to keep
your cell phone charging in the car. (luckily our van has hot taps). And,
since most of the neighbors have "modern" all electric kitchens and we have
gas, we had guests for dinner each night and they showed up in the morning
for their coffee. Used up a lot of that meat. Our next door neighbor whose
property is higher than ours had mud slide down to my patio however, I had
some depressions in my front lawn and was going to buy top soil to fix them.
Now, thanks to my neighbors mud, I don't have to buy the soil. We learned
that there is still such a thing as reading books. Put away four of them
over the past few days. We learned that ice in a cooler will keep things
fresh for days. And, four bags of ice in a stand-up freezer will keep frozen
foods frozen (and wine glasses and gin properly chilled) I learned that cell
phones are OK for receiving emails but not for any with more than a few
words. After a tour today of what remains of the beaches, my wife has
decided that she does not want that dream house on the ocean but is content
with one that is higher in elevation.
3. Allstate set up trailers, tables and representatives at Home Depot
parking lots to take insurance claims. All we could claim was about $20.00
worth of cold cuts that we had to throw out. The claims representative is
still laughing at us. Wonder why?
Now back to the mundane things. Jokes will be flowing post haste to those
who are on my joke lists and the Healey site will get some pretty good
updates over the next week.
John Sims
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