I think we are close to having our electricity back, there is power now exactly 1 mile from the house, this morning it was around 5 miles away. We drove past a real hard hit area about 2 miles from here, total power grid destruction. There were downed power lines, down poles and the narrow lanes of asphalt (the rest of the roadway was covered by a blanket of limbs and debris).
There was a power crew working on a main trunk and I suspect that is part of our issues of the no power thing.
For us, life is as about as normal as it can be depending on a generator for heat and some electricity. I kind of have down to a routine now, run the "genny" for 5 to 6 hours, and check the oil, top off the tank. During the day I run the heating system real warm. The heat is easy to maintain at that point when Bobbin is home.
I'm tired of stove top food and would love a baked anything at this point - but at the same point it's good to have hot food. Doing the dishes by hand is not fun either, but it's nice to have hot water.
I know I have learned a lot in dealing with this "mini-disaster", had this been a real disaster like an earthquake, we might not have natural gas, which would make things rough. We'd have to stop using the water well (until we retested it) and rely on bottled water and treating water.
I need to learn how to accomplish a few things, 1.) Stock pile gasoline for the generator (or convert to propane). 2.) Figure out how to heat the house with out natural gas. 3.) Build that "emergency kit" those public service commercials talk about.
Well that’s it for now… I am hoping that the next update is when the power has been restored.