The Family Sideways: Stormlosers

Stormlosers 9/21/2005 08:18:00 PM (See what I'm talking about)

No, I'm not BITTER, but the losers at the Chronicle didn't seem to think that I would be a good addition to their housemom, collie-owning blogger team. I guess I'll just have to fend for myself here in Rice Village. (Track that back, Chronicle blog!)

D and I walked to CVS because I thought it would be nice to have some baby/body-wipes to clean oursleves once we stop getting water to the house, and we picked up a couple buckets while we were at it (wow. A couple beers can really affect a guy's typing. I've had to delete at least a dozen typos so far).

Anyway.. got our supplies, and went out for dinner, figuring it's best to save what food we have for the inevitable cut-off from society. And while we're at the bar, we actually forget about our plight for a while watching that crazy plane fly around and land at LAX. But then on our walk home we got a call from Andrea (until now, not a blog reader, but after this event, certain to become an addict).

Anyway, she was a bit worried. My parents seemed remarkably calm, actually, and want me to call my uncle Bob, who has lived through hurricanes in Florida, but seeing as my mom gave me a phone number with a 773 area code, I'm not sure she has the right number.

Anyway, had a brilliant (of course) idea as D and I were walking to CVS to pick up the aforementioned supplies: since our primary phone number is VoIP, I can have it trickle down through all our cell phones and our landline, and if it doesn't reach us at any of those, push to voicemail. Technology is so cool. What I think I'll do is have it call all our numbers simultaneously.

Note: in proofreading, I realized that my last three paragraphs started with the word "Anyway". Maybe that's why I didn't get the Chronicle blogger spot).

So, here's the plan: We're going to be charging all our phones until the time the power goes out. We don't expect cell coverage if the power's out, but imagine that the cell companies have a little better redundancy than we do. So: we'll charge all our phones (4) until the power is out. At that time, we'll turn all of them off except for one (assuming it still has reception). At the time that phone dies, we'll turn on another one (assuming it has reception) until it dies, then cascade on down until we're out of phones. If my (very, very rough) calculations are anywhere near correct, that should give us working phones for about 8 days.

This is not a license for you to call us. Please understand that we'll potentially be severely limited for resources, most notably electricity. These phones may be our lifelines. If you know my parents' phone number, use that - we'll be in touch with them or D's parents before anyone else. I'm sure they'll love to talk to y'all about how worried you are about us.

If you don't have our number at home (the VoIP number, which will accept voicemail), the folks can give it to you. If you know that my dad's first name is James, and he lives in Winnetka on Plum Tree Lane, you can find his number at Switchboard.com. I'd put his number here for you for ease, but he's already had his identity stolen once, and if you've got half a brain, and do actually know me, you'll be able to get his number this way.

D and I just got back from dinner, and with all these headline-hogging airplane people out of the spotlight we can finally get down with some news about US. So we're going to go watch TV before our satellite dish gets obliterated.

I may check in again tonight, maybe not. Tomorrow will be an interesting day - just walking to the village (*Maybe* four blocks), we must have seen at least a half dozen cars being packed to leave and a road full of cars ACTUALLY leaving. It's going to be a ghost town around here. However, the bar we went to after dinner was full of people planning on weathering the storm (so to speak), and intent on convincing the barkeep to open on Saturday night. I don't expect D and I will be able to leave our house until Sunday at the earliest.

Later, peeps! Don't count on me updating again tonight. But then again, I may surprise you!

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1 Comments:

B.J. said...

Very odd to hear someone planning for an unsavory weather event. Despite all the Katrina stuff, I still am not too worried for you yet. I am holding out hope that this storm will be what most things are, media hype...maybe it is so strong because it feeds on negative emotions, like Ghostbusters 2. Just sing Higher and Higher by Howard Huntsberry and hold hands...you'll be fine. You have my thoughts.

posted at 9:31 PM