13 February 2010
Today was mostly back to normal, although the world is still white and wonderfully un-Texas-like.
We’d love to have gone to the Rahr Brewery this afternoon, but tours and tastings have been cancelled until the roof is repaired.
My post today is a tribute to my favourite mouse … and a reminder that newer is not always better.
One of the bigger challenges of life without electricity in the modern age was realizing that we were completely out of touch. Not just without lights and heat and television. But—no phone. Our friends all know that our cell phones don’t work in our house . . . thank you, Sprint . . . we live in some sort of weird black hole. And to be fair, it’s not just Sprint. It seems to be all cell phone providers, with the occasional exception of some of our guests with AT&T service. They don’t work well, but the IPhones seem to get a signal at our house. Nothing else does. It’s a fact we’ve come to accept, but not appreciate.
At any rate, normally it’s not that big an issue because we have a land line. But, it didn’t take me too long to realize that we no longer use a telephone that doesn’t require electricity! In this age of cordless, rechargeable phones, power is a part of the equation. And, at first I thought, the little hand units would be good at least until their batteries died. But, no! The main unit requires electricity to be able to “connect” to all the little ones. So, no power = no phone.
I was rather desperate for coffee when I woke in a cold house with no power yesterday, and not knowing how bad the driving conditions might be, I wanted to verify that if I got behind the wheel, there was someplace close to go that would actually be open, have power, and therefore have coffee. I needed a phone!
Mickey Mouse to the rescue! Yes, that’s right. Mickey Mouse saved the day. Ironically, there’s no land line connection in the Mouse Suite, so I had to move him temporarily to the kitchen. But, plugged in, that phone works great and I was able to call around, discovering that the nearby IHOP didn’t have power, either. My next call was to the police station to see if they could tell me how widespread the problem really was. They were very nice, and were able to tell me approximately how many homes and in what areas were affected, but didn’t really know where the dividing lines were. So, next I phoned the local Kroger store—about half the distance between us and that IHOP. The Kroger was open and had power. The Starbucks within was happily serving coffee.
Those who know me well know that I love Starbucks in the summertime—nothing makes me happy like a Vente Carmel Mocha Machiatto. But, for just hot morning coffee—no thank you. Every brew with their name on it tastes burnt. I guess it takes all that carmel and sugar and chocolate to make it palatable to me. But, desperation was a factor yesterday, and off to Kroger we went.
Pulling into the Kroger parking lot, we noticed the drive-thru window at Jack in the Box was open! Yay! Jack would be better than Kroger for coffee, so we parked and went to the door only to find out that the store itself was not open—just the drive-thru. That’s when I noticed the open sign across the street at Fuzzy’s and that’s how I ended up with a yummy breakfast burrito to go with my coffee.
All because Mickey works with no power!
M-I-C … K-E-Y … M-O-U-S-E!
Yay Mickey!
~MB
But, we were committed to it because we had promised Roxy and Damaris that’s what we would do the night they arrived. And, arrive they did, mid-afternoon. On their way to a faire in Florida, we were grateful that they chose to plan their trip around a visit to us along the way. Sadly, the trivia game on the telly tonight was all sports, so we neither did well nor enjoyed it very much. But, we had a good time and Kelly joined us after she had dinner elsewhere.
