Blackout

Almost exactly 12 hours after I posted my blog entry on Friday about how I was enjoying the dramatic weather, I suddenly stopped enjoying it.

High winds with gusts up to 84 mph walloped Humboldt County Saturday morning, toppling hundreds of trees and knocking out power to 64,000 customers. Our electricity was out until about 3 p.m. Sunday.

The blackout coincided with the newspaper deadline, so for the first time ever we used our portable generator to power the computers. It was touch and go and there were all sorts of problems, but we got the paper out on time. I won't go into all the gory details. The only purpose of this blog is to provide me with some narcissitic entertainment, so I generally shy away from writing about work (Except when I feel like it.)

The wind also knocked down 10 feet of fence that surrounds our Fort Apache-style compound. I would have waited to repair wind damage, but in this case I couldn't. The fence keeps our animals in and the Jehovah Witnesses out. It had to be replaced immediately, and was.

And so begins 2006.