Be Wiched to Save the Day

This morning, the timer on the coffeemaker was one minute from going off when — ZZZZT! POW! — out goes the power. We're having major winds, with gusts up to 55 mph, and they hit us early.

If you've had the misfortune of experiencing morning Mark before he's had coffee, you are aware that this is a horrid state of affairs. After several hours in this state, we hauled ourselves into town and found coffee, plus a really fine breakfast, at Be Wiched, in Uptown Martinsville. Thus, I am marginally alive again. Be Wiched owner Kathy Kitzmiller also owns a brand-new boutique — The 9th House — and today was its grand opening. There were mimosas and other treats, so Brugger was ecstatic about finding such a cool place in town.

Happily, we made the best of an increasingly uncomfortable situation, and the power came back on a short time ago. It's freezing out there, and it was getting that way inside. So, we're hoping the wind dies down, and we don't go dark again tonight. Temp is supposed to be 13° F, with a wind chill below 0°.

Ironically, we're about to have a generator installed, but alas, too late to help us this go-around.

 

Last night, though, was an enjoyable time. Lately, we've been spending Friday afternoons at Hamlet Kitchen, right up the street from us. They have a good selection of their own wines, and some decent food you can get for take-out. Last night, we spent an enjoyable couple of hours with some wine. Our regular hostess brought us a couple of glasses with "personalized" napkins — a party theme for Brugger (naturally!) and a semi-humorous Hemingway quote for me (even more naturally!). For afters, we watched Alien: Covenant, which really isn't a favorite, but we've been watching others in the Alien franchise, so we figured we otter.

 

In the immortal words of the late, great Dr. Franklin Ruehl, it was better than a slap in the belly with a wet trout.

O Happy Day

It's another day in Pandemic Land, and I'm alive and kicking. I suppose that's not too shabby.

I always set the timer on the coffeemaker before I go to bed so that I can head straight for it as soon as I come downstairs. This morning, though, some errant grounds had apparently clogged up the works, and a bunch of my precious coffee spilled all over the countertop. I still had coffee, but that little incident should have warned me it was gonna be one of those days.

A while back, water began backing up in the downstairs toilet. My efforts to remedy the issue proved for naught, so I called my trusty plumber, who determined there was an obstruction in the sewer line that leads out to the road. Using a snake the size of the Anaconda in Anaconda, he cleaned out the line enough for it to be usable for a time. However, he indicated a boulder had somehow gotten lodged in there, created a helluva clog, and that, eventually, that section of line would need to be dug up and replaced. That job was set for today.

Unfortunately, here in Greensboro, we rarely get rain. We get torrents. Deluges. Floods. And last night, we got one. Front porch under water again. The stuff was still coming down this morning, but the plumber called and said they'd come on out as soon as the deluge moved to another town.

Well, I needed to do a small bit of laundry, and I figured I'd do it before the guys came out and dug a hole to China in my front yard. I got it done, all right. But then what do you suppose I found? Yep — due to the deluge, that sewer line had gone right ahead and backed up real good. So good that all the water in the washing machine had flooded the laundry room, the kitchen, the closet under the stairs, and a portion of the living room. Not only that, the downstairs bathtub was, quite literally, full of shit.

Why, yes, I did use every towel in the house, not to mention a lot of paper towels from my almost-depleted stock, to get stuff cleaned up, inasmuch as possible. There was nothing I could do about the shitty tub.

Eventually, the plumbers arrived, dug the hole to China, and commenced to working. Along the way, they discovered an underground electrical line, and — POW! — out goes my power. Fortunately, being kind of an emergency and all, Duke Energy guy popped right on over, and after a couple of hours, got my power restored. (Whew).

The plumbers finished the job right about 8:00 p.m. And it appears that water can once again depart my property unimpeded. In torrents, even. Things are mostly cleaned up, including the shitty bathtub, and I've even set up the coffee pot for tomorrow's early treat.

Ah. Another happy day in Pandemic Land.

So how was your day?

Michael the Bitch

There's a certain appealing eeriness about the total darkness—apart from my lantern—at Casa de Rodan
with virtually the whole city devoid of electrical power.

When Hurricane Florence reared her ugly head a few weeks back, advance reports indicated she was going to be the Mother of Dragons... er... Storms, and everyone in North Carolina was advised to buy hurricane snacks and batten down the hatches. Most of us at least got as far as buying some hurricane snacks, i.e., wine and brie. Florence brought significant rain to the Piedmont Triad, and took out power in a few places, but what was supposed to be this giant gale turned out to be more of a fart. Then a few days ago, Hurricane Michael showed up south of Florida, and word was we might get fairly heavy rain for a day or two.

Michael kicked our asses. North Carolina got hit with more wind, rain, and damage than any other state in the storm's path, and the Triad—where I am—got hit worst of all. According to official reports, about 90,000 people lost power. As yet, property damage has not been fully assessed. There were downed trees literally everywhere I went. Duke Energy indicated they had to contend with 75 broken poles, 40 transformers, 150,000 feet of wire on the ground, and over 2,800 individual outage locations. Falling trees knocked out a transmission line that fed two of Duke's substations in northeast Greensboro, and massive flooding delayed the repair.

The first sign that Michael is a bitch.Start bailing,
ladies and gentlemen...

The first sign that things were going really badly on Thursday was when water began flooding our second-floor office, primarily due to the balcony having zero drainage, and water six inches deep having nowhere to go but inside the building. Not to mention non-existent seals on windows, which admitted significant quantities of water directly into the suite. And air conditioning vents taking on water and dumping it on us from the ceiling. As far as I'm concerned, it's a staggering indictment of the builder's stupidity, which I have been harping on since long before Michael. It's easily the most horrendously designed building I've ever worked in. We—the staff of The Mailbox—ended up having to take responsibility for bailing and sopping up water all Thursday afternoon. The building management finally got some pumps working sometime after business hours, so that on Friday—after the worst of the weather had passed—at least we had a mostly dry office.

Since our homes were both dark, rather than go straight home on Friday evening, Ms. Brugger and I ventured over to Rioja Wine Bar, a favorite destination of ours, and one of the few establishments in the area to retain power. So we honored them with some significant patronage on Friday night, I can tell you.

Saturday morning, after about 30 hours in the dark, Ms. B.'s power came back on. So yesterday, still with no electricity flowing at my house, I trucked over to her place and made myself productive working on West Virginia: Lair of the Mothman, which is in its finishing stages. Despite my presence, Ms. B. managed to make the best of the situation. However, I knew my mom, in Martinsville, VA, was without power or working telephone. I eventually managed to contact some of her friends as well as my brother, who went up from Winston-Salem last night to make sure she was secure. And I headed there early this morning to help set things straight—ironically, just about the time my own power came back on, after almost 60 hours.

Martinsville was hit hard as well. It's a miracle my mom's power came back on when it did, as literally every power pole on the block north of her place—right up to her yard—was demolished. It was all still down when I left for home a short while ago.

I rarely have a good word to say about Duke Energy, and as a supposedly competent corporate entity, I have naught but disdain for it. However, I do give those hardworking crews who have gotten out there to clean up this horror all the credit they deserve. Given the sheer scope of the damage, I am fortunate I'm not still stumbling around in the dark. I did lose some of my refrigerated items, but I managed to get a fair amount of the most expensive edibles I had in the freezer transferred over to Ms. B.'s freezer before it was too late. Currently, my cable and internet are still out, but since I have phone service, I'm using my phone's hot spot to connect via my laptop.

This has been a matter of making the best of a bad situation and counting one's blessings under the circumstances. And quite frankly, because the storm turned out to be such a monster, dealing with it hasn't been the bitter pill it is when someone spits on the road and knocks out the power in Greensboro for hours on end—which is so commonplace that investing in a generator has become a most appealing prospect.

If you were in the storm's path, I hope you have made out no worse than I. My best to you and yours.

Damage to power lines at the lot adjacent to my mom's

Trees and poles down at Patrick Henry Mall, Martinsville, VA

Rufus Brugger cares not a whit about the inconveniences of hurricanes when it means he can lie on
Old Dude's laptop case.

Riding the Storm Out

Hurricane Florence hit the east coast hard the past couple of days, especially along the North and South Carolina coasts. Here in Greensboro and other areas of the Piedmont, we've all battened down the hatches (and cleaned out the bread and milk from every grocery store), but so far, we've avoided the brunt of it. Florence has been downgraded to a tropical storm, and despite a few deluges and some big winds, the damn-near apocalyptic event so many expected hasn't materialized. This is not a complaint.

That said, it's still dumping rain, and as anyone who follows me on social media probably knows, we lose power here if someone spits on the road. There's been a lot of spitting, and there's still a couple of days left of it in the forecast. I'm immensely thankful to have weathered things so well to this point. Hoping for the best until this beast passes into history.

I can probably go ahead and break into the hurricane snacks I stocked up on. Not bread and milk, I'll have you know.