1. Obviously, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey are not well-equipped to handle hurricanes. But that doesn’t mean that people in Florida (and by "people," I mean my mother) should tell you how nice the weather is there. I’d like to see how they handle a blizzard.
2. When CL & P says that "We are assessing the situation," it would be just as accurate if they put the period after the fifth letter of the third word and deleted the rest of the sentence.
3. My family’s Verizon "Anytime" minutes cell phone plan is not equipped to handle a week or more without land lines. And it’s not all that helpful to get text messages from Verizon saying that we’ve used up 50% of our minutes for the month...and it’s only November 3rd.
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4. Starbucks gets really crowded when no one has Internet service.
5. It’s comforting to own an automatic, propane-powered generator when there’s a lengthy power outage. Except when there are so many power lines and utility poles down in your neighborhood that the propane truck can’t get through to refill your tanks, and then it’s even more stressful than not having a generator at all. After all, if you have no power, you don’t have to worry about conserving power. But if you do have power, and your propane tank is down to 10% so you don’t want to turn on the furnace, the house gets just as cold. Also, if you have no power at all, your wife doesn’t yell at you to turn off the lights.
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5B. Apparently, generators need oil after every few days of continuous running. Also, apparently, someone at the generator company is quite up-to-date on the definition of the word "automatic." To someone who has not even removed the dipstick from an automobile in decades, having to check the oil ("and if you have to put more in," says the person at the generator company, trying to talk us through it as if we’re a flight attendant trying to land a plane, "put it in the other hole.") is not automatic.
5C. Evidently you have to shut off the generator before you check the oil.
6. The last two things that would remain plugged in if the propane tank got down to 5%: the refrigerator and the cell phone chargers.
7. Judging from the number of people who were in Stamford parks that were "Closed Until Further Notice," Stamford residents have a healthy disregard for authority.
8. When everybody is complaining about gas lines, nobody is complaining about gas prices. And what was all the complaining about anyway? Was nobody alive in 1973?
9. Utility poles are really, really heavy. (I tried to roll one out of my driveway and couldn’t budge it.) It is therefore somewhat surprising that they can break like twigs.
10. When a giant oak tree is torn from the ground by its roots, the hole left in the ground doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as big as the massive bottom of the tree.
For more on our adventures as first-time homeowners at age 57, and moving to Stamford, visit http://theupsizers.wordpress.com/
