Tuesday, August 4th, Tropical Storm Isaias came ashore in Connecticut and did impressive damage. I took some photos which are not great; you can find plenty online showing trees down, buildings and other property damaged. Some trees looked as if they had been wrung; my friend Rich took this photo:
I was lucky, as we had little to no power loss in my condo community. However, the internet/phone/TV utility went out, and after two days of pushing the posted estimate for repair further, they switched to "as soon as possible". Since I use internet for work (also the landline phone, to a more limited extent), I got permission from work to charge my additional data draws to work, as long as it didn't get too expensive.
It worked out to an extra 2-3GB per day. For a week, although on the weekend I used as little as possible. I didn't feel right about doing social things when work was paying for the additional data. Online meetings take a LOT of data, in case you were wondering.
On Tuesday, a week after the storm, late in the day, they predicted that we'd get service back by around 3:00am on Friday. Wednesday afternoon I was startled to hear the phone ring - naturally, it was a robocall.* While I had to pop back onto the hotspot a couple of times on Thursday to get through a work meeting when the internet faded, by Friday morning it was indeed back to being stable.
I still feel that I came out well, as some people were without power for nine days. Not only did they lose any food in their refrigerator (at least two friends said they'd just done a big shopping trip) but some needed CPAPs or other devices to help them sleep, or other medical support.
I've caught up on a couple lectures that happened while I was offline. It's quite handy that they record them and you have a week or two in which to watch or rewatch. One is on Chicago architecture styles, the other on Nicola Tesla.
* I think the robotcall was from the National Republican Congressional Committee, which was funny because our primary election was the day before. I voted by absentee ballot, which I often do because of travel, but this time I dropped it into a box at Town Hall instead of mailing, especially as it arrived only the Saturday before.
How is my August Mini-Resolution going?
- The Boneyard Shawl is still in timeout. I've felt the need to work through some of the stash I'm trying to divest - I know, counterintuitive - and I've made a scarf and four hats:
Counterclockwise from the top right: hat of leftover deep blue and the last bit of some handdyed/handspun; the scarf of Aslan Trends "Los Andes"; a hat of Nashua Stripes and some leftover brown; hat of leftover green and some fingering weight wool I dyed, and used doubled; and the bottom center hat is from a ball of Knitting Notions Classic Merino Sport and some random pink/multi from the stash (I'd planned to use a different pattern but the yarns blended too much so I just did garter stripes). On the bottom right is a partly done hat, somebody did the center part and it cupped, so I decided to add sides and turn it into a hat. For a long time it was a decoration at MakeHartford for the String Thing area, and when MH closed I brought anything not wanted home and finally have been going through the last bag of yarn and bits. My addition is in a very close shade of green, but just single crochet, not entrelac Tunisian. Or any Tunisian.
- Other UFOs remain UFOs at this time. Unless you count the fifth hat, but I didn't do the starting part and it's not really from MY stash.
- At least one non-fiber project progressed a bit. What else could I do without internet or TV? I pulled out DVDs and audio books, and finished a novel and an anthology by Agatha Christie.
- Thrift store load progressed a bit. I posted that if the charity group that will receive the items I've made wants the animal-fiber yarns to let me know, otherwise they go to the thrift store too.
- Yarn diet - well, not perfect, because I signed up for a yarn club, but the first delivery is at the end of September and they had only one week for subscriptions. So I count it, and I can yarn diet through September.
