After Sandy - How's everybody?

[CarlD]

Sandy was and still is very tough on us. We lost power from Monday to Saturday, it started getting cold, and, because nobody had power, the gas stations were closed. Then some got power and were immediately "drained" with police usually at open stations. Some were running on generators (of course THEY had plenty of gas for their generators! ) One used a portable arc welder as generator! Every generator in the region was snapped up, so were gas cans, every size battery but 9volt, chain saws, drop cords, and, surprisingly 3-prong plugs! Also octane-booster is in short supply as sometimes only regular is being delivered to the stations. Luckily, I had 2 generators: A big one I bought after last year's freak Halloween blizzard and an older 2k suitcase type.

Someone gave me a head-slap simple idea for how to connect my furnace (gas, not electric). Just cut the 110v line going into the red cut off switch, put a 3 prong plug on that, put an outlet box on the other and, and plug the furnace into the generator. When power is restored, just plug it into the outlet. Works great, and the gen has a GFCI breaker on the circuit, so it's protected. But the gas shortage made it dicey. And no internet made communication tough. AT&T and T-Mobile both had intermittent 3G/4G service and what they had was slow so we'd be switching between the 'droids on T-Mo to the iPads on AT&T just to connect.

The gas situation is easing with rationing here in NJ. Match the last digit on your license tag to the date. Odd digits can fill on odd dates, even digits on even dates.

Just as everything was getting back to normal, we got hit yesterday with a nor'easter and it dumped 7" of snow on us. However, it warmed up so quickly that it's melting fast. We JUST had our driveway paved before Sandy so it's super-black and therefore is melting far faster than the old asphalt did, which had whitened over 25 years. By 9:30 the 7" was down to about 2-3". Better still, we never lost power.

Hopefully, by next week we'll be pretty normal again!