From our utility company’s Facebook page:

“TUES, JULY 23, 9:30A.M. STORM RESTORATION UPDATE: 1,800+ MEMBERS OUT OF POWER. 7,200 restored since Friday night. More help today: Crews from SEVEN neighboring co-ops plus contractors with expertise in tree clearing, underground and overhead power line construction.

“Bone Lake and Half Moon Lake [areas] should be restored today, except where property owners need to repair damage to their meter masts or meter sockets. Balsam Lake [area] is on with exception of NE corner.

At sunrise this morning at our Siren office, underground crews were loading equipment for another day of storm restoration.

Tree crews and linemen start the day in Centuria with work orders. We are working hard to get MOST EVERYONE RESTORED BY THE END OF THE WEEK.

“Our thoughts and prayers to those with property damage and prolonged outages. THANK YOU for your continued patience!” *

* Oh, yeah, the old thoughts and prayers thing. Frankly, we would rather have electricity.**

** Token sarcasm. I know they are working as hard as they can to restore power and I am not criticizing, just making a tasteless joke.

The outage map as of 4:31 today.

NEWS FLASH!

AS OF 3:00 P.M. TODAY THE POWER IS BACK ON AT ANTLER LAKE!!!

Yay! I was at the local school taking advantage of their shower room and the Red Cross’s  bottled water when I got a text from the power company saying power had been restored at our address, and when we got home… it was true!

There was another woman at the school who did not have power yet; she was picking up a case of bottled water. We chatted about the situation, and I talked about how I understood the power company’s priorities: restore electricity to the densest areas first, then perhaps the big dairy farms (because who wants to milk 200+ cows by hand, then have to dump the milk on the ground because they have no way to chill it), then work their way down the list. Clearly, she had not thought of any of that, just that She.Wanted.Electricity.NOW. Some people’s children…

In our case, the power came on just in time. We have been flushing the toilet with buckets of water drained from the [mega-huge] hot water heater, and this morning we had drained the tank. The next step would have been lugging buckets of water from the lake; not impossible at all, but not easy for a couple of semi-disabled elderly folks.

Sigh… now I will be able to watch Mueller’s testimony tomorrow from the comfort of my knitting chair. Life is good.