**I have more pictures, but because the Edge network isn’t working, I can’t get them off my phone.  I took some with my regular camera, but don’t have it with me right now.  I’ll update as soon as I can get them!**

We had a really bad ice storm last night.  It rained all night, and slowly the rain froze on the tree branches, making them extremely heavy.  No one was at Destare, so I was sent home super early (at 8:30!  I called Amy and Caroline to see if they wanted to come over to drink wine, but they couldn’t.  Instead, I went with my dad to buy wine for the office party at Larry’s).

We watched Pushing Daisies, then we all went to bed around 10:30, cause we were expecting the power to go off at any minute.  Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up and could just hear crashes throughout the neighborhood.  It was really hard to go to sleep, because I kept worrying about my car, which was in the driveway, under a mostly dead tree.  I was worried about it, but my dad said it’d be fine.  But all night, I kept hearing tree branches falling, and kept thinking “Oh man, what if something big falls on my car?!”  Usually I keep a fan on, but with the power dead, my fan went out.  I have an app on my iPhone called White Noise that I turned on, which helped, until Niles called me at 2am.  I answered, but couldn’t hear anything.  He had also previously woken me up around 12:45 telling me to go to Hooligans.  They had power (a generator), and it was packed.  My friend Rob also sent me a text asking me to come out.  I had already been asleep for 3 hours, so that was not going to happen.

Around 3am, I woke up to a huge crash and the whole house shook.  It was as if we were being attacked by bombs.  It was absolutely ridiculous.  My heart started beating really fast, and I could hear my parents talking in the other room, so I got out of bed and said “Did you guy feel that?!?!?!!?”  We all went downstairs to check things out.  My dad grabbed a huge camping flashlight, and went outside to see what happened.  It was still pouring, so he got soaked.  Turns out, one of the trees in our back yard had split in half, took out our electrical service (what actually feed the electricity into the house).  It also took the phones line with it.  We called Unitil (our electricity provider) from my cell phone at 3am and told them what happened.

We all woke up again at 8am and went downstairs for breakfast.  My parents had made pancakes, and coffee in their drip coffee maker that works on the stove.  I had a mini pancake with real maple syrup, plus my cereal and egg whites like I usually do.  It was freezing, so after breakfast, we all went back to bed. I didn’t end up actually getting up until 11:40.  It was cold, and I had nothing to do anyway, so staying in bed where it was warm seemed like a great idea.

My dad headed out for work - City Hall was closed, but  we were in a state of emergency, so they needed people downtown to coordinate efforts.  My dad was manning City Hall, answering the phones and also using a Walkie Talkie to talk to people who were over at the Senior Center setting up cots as a shelter for people.  My mom and I stayed home and puttered around in the house, freezing cold.

I was sitting on the couch reading a book wearing:

• a turtleneck
• 2 sweaters
• leggings
• jeans
• 2 pairs of socks
• slippers
• a hat
• a scarf
• my “blanket with sleeves” (but not The Snuggie)

I also had a regular blanket on top of me, and I was STILL cold.  Our thermostat read 56 degrees.

We have no heat, no hot water, no phone, no cable, no internet…. it sucks.

I definitely think the worst part of this is that I can’t exercise.  I could exercise at home, but I can’t shower.  The Rec Center at school is going to be closed until Tuesday (I think) because they don’t have power either.  If I can’t shower, I can’t exercise (because I will get sweaty and gross.  I guess I could take a cold shower, but if we have no heat, that could be dangerous to my health.  If the Rec Center was open, I wouldn’t have a problem at all.  I could exercise and shower there.  I’m angry.  Maybe I could use my dad’s membership at the YMCA).

Luckily, our friend Sara said that we can go over to her house and shower.  It seems like she is the only person we know in and around Fitchburg who has power.  It’s incredible.  I should figure out a time for me to go over there tomorrow, and just made sure that I have all my exercising done before then.  It’s a pretty frustrated feeling, but I understand that it’s not the end of the world.  No where near.  Maybe I’ll exercise tonight before bed, go to bed, wake up in the morning, exercise again, and then shower.  Then I’ll just change my sheets before bed tomorrow night (cause I think I’m due for a change anyway).

Ok, so anyway.  Back to this afternoon.  Around 3:30, my mom mentioned that if it gets really cold out, it might get to around 30 degrees (about 0 degrees Celsius) in our house.  I said there was absolutely no way!  She says “Yes, it’s possible.  We should rent a hotel room.”  Then I said “We should go get some wood so we can use our fireplace.  If it’s going to get THAT cold, we might as well.  It would be better than nothing.”

So I went out back to where we keep our fire wood.  Some of it is under a tarp, but of all the wood we had, I’d say only 30% was covered, and thus, dry.  I grabbed that wood and threw it in our wheelbarrow, then looked at the trees that had crashed down.  Some of the wood looked dry (it was a much lighter color than the wood that was clearly wet).  I went downstairs, grabbed one of my dad’s saws, and went back outside and started sawing away at the wood.  I think I’ve heard that it’s not that good to burn wood that is fresh, but I figure if we don’t use it tonight, we could use it sometime later.  I just wanted to get it before it got wet.  I brought in all of wood into the garage, and hopefully we’ll be able to light a fire tonight.  (Sawing wood is a little but like exercise, right?  It did make me a little out of breath!)

Then, I went back into the house, and I went upstairs to my mom’s room where she was reading her book under the remaining sunlight.

“I’m going to City Hall.  I can’t stand it anymore.”

“Ok.”

“Want to come?”

“I guess….  what will I do there?”

“I dunno, bring your book.  I’m going to bring my computer.”

“But I’m done with my book.”

“So bring another book.”

“Okay.”

So then I packed up a few things (my laptop, charger, charger for my iPhone [we had been taking turns charging our cells in my car, my lighter still works even if the car isn't on, and we were quickly using up cell phone batteries], water bottle, hat and gloves), and we headed down to City Hall.  When we got there, my dad told us that Trevor had just set out to the house to check on us.  I tried calling him, but couldn’t get through.  Somethings wrong with my phone, and when someone calls, I answer, but it’s just silence.  Also, the Edge network (how I use internet on my phone) isn’t working either.  It’s frustrating.

So now I’m warm and in City Hall using my computer.  I think I’ll see if my mom wants to watch TV on it or something. We’re both pretty bored.  When I walked it, it was so warm I said “I think we should sleep here tonight.”  My dad said “We were talking about having a party here tonight!!!”  The party at Larry’s that I was so exctied about is cancelled cause he doens’t have heat, and we’d have no way to make any food.  It sounds like they might grab take out and chips and dip and bring it here!  My dad and I went out last night and bought all the wine… I think it’d be fun!