The heat is on!

And oh how good it feels! Thirty-seven and a half hours without power was no laughing matter. Stumbling about by torch and candlelight soon lost its charm, the temperature indoors dropped down to the low 40sF (around 6C), and we couldn't even make a warming cup of tea or slice of toast.

Worst of all was having to crawl out of a cosy sleeping bag several times during the night in order to trek down to the basement and plunge hands into the icey water of the sump as we bailed it out with bottles and a baked bean can. Really not fun. And to make matters even more depressing, we had no way of knowing when it would all end.

After some initial excitement, the kids decided they were not impressed. Luckily friends stepped in and invited them to warmer houses during the daytime. And last night we ate out at our local diner, bringing home takeaway for the Man who stayed home on sump duty.

I'm not ashamed to say that I whooped for joy when at 3:45 this afternoon, just as I was halfway through bailing, the sump pump suddenly churned back into action and the boiler (furnace) hummed with life again.

As I write, friends of ours (including the Exiles) and hundreds of thousands across the Northeast are still minus power, and there are people in more remote areas who might not be reconnected until the middle of the week. We've had a fairly miserable couple of days, but all things considered it looks like we got off lightly.