Yes, they did, but we'll get to that.
It all started innocently enough. Last Monday I found out I was going to Bethel for an inservice. Kind of iffy on that; I didn't really want to go but I didn't really not want to go. On the one hand it was a chance to shop, shower (regularly) and avoid the honey bucket. On the other hand, it's kind of a pain to find a sub, make sub plans, get everything packed up, etc. The plan was I would leave after school on Thursday. I called on Wednesday morning to make my reservations. When it was time to pay they said, "don't give me your credit card number yet, it's supposed to be bad tomorrow, you probably won't even go." More of a reason to not want to go, or even plan to go.
I call on Thursday morning with the card number. Planes are flying but late. At this point it is in the teens temperature-wise with wind about 20-30 mph. At about 4:30 I get a call that my plane is in Kipnuk, the next village over and will be by me in about 25 minutes. Temperature is up a little, now in the high 20's/low 30's, wind blowing in the 40's-50's mph range. 10 minutes later I get a call that the pilot is turning around and heading back to Bethel. The new plan is that I will leave Friday morning on the first plane (10:30).
At this point I need to get something to eat. I didn't eat much during the day because I was planning to go out to eat in Bethel for my usual $30 two taco meal. Usually, if I don't have anything at home I go to the store, get some food, go home to get a can of Diet Coke and then come back to school to eat. I walked to the store with the wind now regularly in the high 40's with gust in the high 50 mph's. Luckily it wasn't too cold, still in the 30's. As I leave the store and the wind blows me down the ramp I decide to just go right home and stay there for the evening.
On the walk home I had to stop and hand on to a fence because the wind would have knocked me over. It was kind of cool actually. I get home, eat, do some crossword puzzles and settle down to watch Big Bang Theory and then 30 Rock. At about 8:45, right in the middle of 30 Rock, everything goes off; TV, lights, refrigerator, heat. In Illinois when this happens I usually just go to bed, so that's what I did. Ten minutes later I get a call from Jeff, one of the other teachers. He tells me that the power is off in the whole village and not to expect it back at least until it gets light out, which at this time of year is not until 11:00 am. I think about going to sleep at the school but it's still fairly warm, I'm not going to freeze to death so I bundle up-long underwear, flannel pants, two pairs of socks, 3 shirts, two blankets and back to bed. It was cold. I woke up 3 or 4 times and each time I was colder and had to readjust. My alarm rings at 6:45 and because I don't want to get out of bed, I hit snooze for an hour and a half until 8:15. Since I'm supposed to be at school at 8:15, I figure I should probably get up. Since all of my clean clothes are in my suitcase at the school waiting to go to Bethel all I have to wear is a pair of sweat pants and a T-shirt.
When I get to school, I find out the two people who know how to fix the electricity are out of town. We're not sure when they'll be back. Someone says they might stay away longer because they don't want to come back when the power's out. Our custodian hooks up a generator at my house and I get to pick up to two items that I want to use. I opted for heat and TV. My theory was "you can live by the light of the TV, but you can't watch the lights." We only had one generator so one of the other teachers had a series of extension cords running from the school to his house. As it turns out the power did go back on sometime that afternoon and I now have the generator at my house in case this happens again (I'm told it will.) I ended up not going to Bethel.
After those events, it has now gotten colder, pretty much 15 or lower since Saturday. Today my doorknob froze and I couldn't get in for about a half hour. My neighbor came over and finally got it open for me.
Now, I'm going to go home and watch Charlie Brown. Good Grief!
