you have my complete and utter sympathy. not fun. not fun at all.

did you have water?

And there was plenty to drink in the "refrigerator." We were stuck in for the first three days, though, as the sidewalks outside the apartment were a solid ice sheet and my mother, who is 89 with a couple of bad hips, couldn't walk it without killing herself. The car was stuck in pretty deep too. By Saturday, enough of the ice had melted that we could get out and go someplace warm for a couple of hours. Power was out all over the place (we live in the Philly suburbs), and though they predicted snow all week we at least had sunny skies and the temp occasionally rose above freezing.

-- Mal

We went five days without, a shop vac--sucks and blows.

Warm, power filled vibes headed your way.

Hard to imagine.

I know exactly what you went through. We managed to cook on the fireplace though, so at least we had some hot meals. I was sick at how much food we had to throw away.

Which is rotten.

-- Mal

We had a major snow/ice storm several years ago, major tree damage everywhere. It really wasn't snow or ice--what fell and stayed on the ground was almost like cement--hard and grainy. You couldn't shovel it, it was hard as a rock and at least four or five inches thick. On top of that, it was really cold.

I was without power for four days. The apartment felt like a tomb. Thank god that was back before TV was converted to digital, and I had a little portable TV that used batteries, otherwise I would have been totally cut off. I had the dog in three or four t-shirts and sweaters just to try to stay warm.

There was no power for miles around, businesses had to shut their doors for days. When I came home from work on Day 4 and drove down my street and saw lights in my building, I almost cried. The dog danced when I walked in the door. I was lucky--some people didn't get power back for up to three weeks after the storm.

What I will remember most is walking into the grocery store a day or so afterwards. They were still restocking, and there was no food anywhere except for the nonperishables. They had to throw out hundreds of thousands of dollars of fresh food because they had no way to keep it cold. I will never forget how creepy it was to be in a store with almost totally empty shelves.

Stay warm--hopefully the power will be back soon.