Back in the Land of Heat and Electricity

Long story short, we got spanked by Hurricane Sandy. And not a fun kind of spanking. I've been without power since about 7:30 on Monday. My parents (who were trying to fly back from Europe) found out they had power, so they offered us their house. Unfortunately, our driveway looked like this:

My windshield (on the red car) didn't make it. The hood's a little dinged, too. 

We had gas and hot water, which was nice, but the house was getting rather chilly. Our awesome neighbors (who own the tree that fell) whipped out their chainsaws to help cut us out, but "Captain John" (retired from FDNY) only made one cut in the main trunk before he decided that it wasn't wise for him to deal with this mess:

The fire chief declared this "non-urgent". 

We agreed with his assessment and decided to stick it out. A hot shower did wonders for me, and I loaded up on shirts and socks and gloves. Rest assured, I also managed to work on the book-in-progress after it got too dark to knit.

Going old-school. In my pajamas and a "Buy More" sweatshirt. 

This morning, we decided we'd had enough. My parents had landed in New York, and the neighbor told us to just drive our intact car down our side lawn to his driveway. We'll be back and forth for a while checking on the tree situation, but I estimate we'll be camped out up here at least through Sunday. Oh well. Things aren't super, but as a walk around our neighborhood showed us, they could be a whole lot worse!

Also! To lift your spirits, check out my guest blog post over at Romance With a Bite. If you haven't read The Edge of the Sphere yet, you can try to win an e-copy!