The Ice Storm

The Storm
At noon on Jan. 26, the rain and sleet began. They continued until the evening of the 27th. We accumulated 1.6 inches of precipitation which means the ice built up over everything.



By Jan. 27th, as frequently as every five to ten minutes we heard the crack of large branches breaking from their trees followed by the tinkling of the ice shattering as the branch landed.



In some places, whole trees feel and over a thousand power poles broke or otherwise needed to be replaced. Our pole simply bent under the weight.



The power lines on one side bowed until they touched the ground. Further down in the other direction, they touched the ground and one line broke.



The whole northern half of Arkansas lost electricity, as well as areas in OK, southern MO, KY, TN and other states. Since such a massive area was involved, recovery has been a slow, steady process. Power-company crews and tree-trimming crews have come in from all over the nation to help out, for which we are very thankful.


How We Did
We lost electricity at 10:20 AM on Jan. 27th and finally regained it a week later at 4:50 PM on Feb. 3. Now, nearly two weeks later, the majority of outages in our area have been restored though there are several hundred people locally still without power.

Many people around here bought generators to run their furnace, refrigerators, and freezers for a few hours--and to sometimes run their computers and a few lights.



Our house is super-insulated and has both passive and active solar heating, so we decided not to buy a generator. (Generators cost about $900 and supplies quickly disappeared even though new shipments arrived each day.)

So, we had no source of electricity for 7 days and 5.5 hours. Because of the house's good insulation and due to the heat stored in the thermal mass of the floors, we never dropped below 60 degrees during this time. Once it hit 60F at night, it just stayed there.



If the sun shone during the day, the sunlight heated the house. Since our house is also super-tight, we had to open the windows a crack on the sunny days to help get some fresh air inside. (The ERV, which normally brings in fresh air, needs electricity to operate.) This meant the house didn't heat as much as it could have. On the cloudy days, we kept most of the windows covered with the blinds and thermal drapes to help hold in the warmth.

The interior temp. at the moment the power went off was 73.

Jan. 27, cloudy
Indoor High: 73F Low: 60F
Outdoor High: 31F Low: 21F


Jan. 28, sunny
Indoor High: 72F Low: 60F
Outdoor High: 29F Low: 14F


Jan. 29, partly cloudy
Indoor High: 70F Low: 62F
Outdoor High: 35F Low: 24F


Jan. 30, mostly cloudy
Indoor High: 64F Low: 60F
Outdoor High: 42F Low: 24F


Jan. 31, sunny
Indoor High: 67F Low: 63F
Outdoor High: 54F Low: 26F


Feb. 1, sunny
Indoor High: 68F Low: 64F
Outdoor High: 52F Low: 36F


Feb. 2, partly cloudy
Indoor High: 68F Low: 62F
Outdoor High: 44F Low: 20F


Feb. 3, partly cloudy
Indoor High (before power came on): 66F
Outdoor High: 34F

Of course, we use electricity for other things than heating. After 24 hours, the refrigerator no longer kept the food cold. We took ice from the plenteous outdoor supply and placed it in a container in the refrigerator to help keep the food cold. The freezer began to thaw after 48 hours. A neighbor who had a generator and a half-empty freezer offered to let us use his extra freezer room, and we took him up on it. We also ate a lot of previously-frozen food those first few days.

We moved the food that only needed refrigeration into our newly-completed garage where the temperture was maintaining at just above 32F. We put ice in our two ice boxes, and the food kept plenty cold.



My old house, which we still own, is the next house down the road, and it has propane heating for the water, stove, and fireplace (as well as the furnace, which didn't work without electricity). We cooked one hot meal a day on the propane stove. We were able to keep that house warm enough that the water pipes didn't freeze--though we also left two faucets dripping at night.

On Thursday, Jan. 29, we were losing our water. Water was starting to dribble from the faucet instead of gush. We filled a number of gallon jugs of water just in case we were going to lose water all together. Much to our relief, on Friday morning, the pressure was back and stayed strong from then on. We think someone got a generator connected to the pump on the nearby water tower until power could be restored.



Since we have an active solar water heater, we had enough hot water for one shower a day on the sunny days. That was very nice. We also heard that some people lost their phone connections during the storm, but our lines are underground and were not affected.



While our house was designed to maximize the use of natural lighting, we still had to use flashlights to move about and read after the sun went down. By 8:30 PM on most nights, we were having trouble staying awake and gratefully crawled into our warm beds. We didn't get up out of bed until daybreak at about 6:45 AM.

So we didn't suffer (thank God!), but I sure do like electricity. How could I blog without it? ;)

Taking Risks

I like to say, "Failure is just another chance to try again."

If you aren't willing to risk failure, you'll never try anything new. Everyone starts out at the bottom when doing something new; mistakes are expected and nothing to be ashamed of. If it's worth trying, then it's worth failing at. Go ahead and try it! It doesn't matter if you don't progress as rapidly as others. Take your time to learn the basics. Ask questions. Enjoy yourself. Focus on your own progress rather than comparing yourself to others. Often, you will be your own worst critic, so listen and believe when others praise your work even when it looks like crude compared to what you imagined.

And, even once you reach mastery of a skill, realize that flubs will happen and bad days occur. Such is life. But don't worry: failure is just another chance to try again.

A Little Bit About Me

I've always been a storyteller. Even as a teenager, I'd make up stories to tell myself as I was falling asleep. I was never very good at writing them down, though. If I started writing one of my stories, I'd mentally finish it and move on to the next story before I had more than the first chapter written down. (Part of my problem has always been the desire to re-write a scene until it is perfect. I'd never get around to writing the rest of the story. Now I force myself to write the complete story down before editing it.)

When I was in high school, I saw an ad for a mail-in course on writing children's literature. It was with the Institute of Children's Literature. I somehow (and I'm still not sure how) convinced my parents to let me take this course. The Institute wrote back saying they normally didn't take students as young as I was, but that my writing was good enough that they'd decided to accept me. I took the course and learned a lot from it. However, my teacher didn't really like my fantasy stories. She saw that I was very good at writing educational stuff and encouraged me in that direction.

I turned in my last assignment--a fantasy story!--right before heading off for college. It was returned with a "you can do better than this--try again!" note. Well, I probably could, but I was too busy with school work and settling in at college. Nearly two years later, in 1996, I finally decided that it would be a shame not to finish the course. I wrote another fantasy story. Back came a letter saying, "I never thought to hear from you again after so much time!" along with some notes on my story and a graduation certificate.

At that point, I started to ponder how I could combine my college major--equine science--with writing. I decided to create a CD-ROM on horse care for my Honor's Thesis. I sat in on a graduate-level course on authoring CD-ROMs and created my first CD-ROM on how to select, buy, and care for a horse. My equine science teacher knew about this and asked me to do my internship with her. Some of my fellow students had troubles learning the various horse gaits (e.g. walk, trot, canter, gallop, foxtrot, rack, slow gait), and my teacher wanted me to write a CD-ROM teaching this information. My "Horse Movement and Gaits" CD-ROM is now used by many universities, horse clubs, and individuals all over the world. After I graduated, I refined that CD-ROM and went on to produce CD-ROMs on "A Guide to Horse Nutrition" and "Horse Conformation & Athletic Movement."

About a year ago, I decided to write fantasy stories again. Looking back, I can see that my Children's Literature teacher was right about the problems with those stories. I can also see how far I've come in my skill as a writer. One bonus in writing educational CD-ROMs is that it taught me how to clearly convey information in as few words as possible. That is a very important skill for any writer.

Writing fantasy is very different from writing educational CD-ROMs, but I love it!