Hurricane Ike in Dayton:Day 3

Sean and I have been taken back in time to when people didn't have electricity or running water. Our power has been out since Sunday at 2pm due to the hurricane category 1 winds that hit our area for about 4 hours on Sunday. We were quite lucky that the house and our trees survived which was not the case for a lot of people. Our neighborhood looked like a war zone. Tree and limbs down all over the place. A few blocks away a tree hit a house and damaged the roof. Another tree crushed a shed. I'm going to try and take some pictures this evening of the damage.

Gas stations are running out of gas and raising the price to 4.30 a gal. Luckily I have 1/4 of a tank which should last me until early next week. Tonight I need to clean out our frig and freezer. Some of the stuff we saved by taking to a friend's that has power and an extra frig. We also filled up quite a few bottles and some pitchers of water so we have fresh water to drink. If this lasts much longer I may be walking down to the creek to get buckets of water to flush the toilets.

Last night the Brinks security system, that was installed in the house by a previous owner, but we don't use, started going off at 5:00 am this morning. My guess is the battery was running out of power. We couldn't figure out how to get the cover off to begin with. It takes a square something. Luckily when I went to the garage to the socket set, I saw the control box in the laundry room. When I got the cover off I couldn't figure out how to disconnect the battery. However thanks to my Dad I knew to unscrew and pull out the wires to disconnect them from the circuit board. Now at this point you may be asking yourself why I was doing this and not Sean.....well funny story the cat knocked Sean glasses off the night stand while I was gone (in Colorado) and the dogs chewed them up. So Sean was basically blind. Anyways I'm frantically unscrewing and disconnecting wires and of course it is the last one that turns the damn alarm off! I'm of right mind to write Brinks an e-mail and state that as part of their disconnection they disconnect everything!!!! Bastards!!!

However I'm not really complaining or mad because we were very fortunate and I know the power company is doing everything they can to restore power as fast as they can. Apparently they had sent crews down to Texas to help those people who are probably worse off then we are. On the plus side this will be a story to tell for years, I'm saving money on electricity, and bonding with neighbors. On the downside work has power! oh well.

We are surviving with the grill, flash lights, and pb&j!!!