Still Alive

It's 4AM and we are still alive and kicking. Somewhere around or just before midnight the wind dropped off some. My son noticed the change as he said he could no longer hear it howling from his bedroom and my trip outside to the wood furnace about then showed that although it was still blowing at a good pace it was no longer whipping the snow around in continual drifts like it had been all day.

By 1AM I was making some headway towards getting the entire house warmed up into the mid 60's level once again.

Now bare in mind the entire time while I been complaining about not being able to get things past the 60 degree or so mark I am referring to the parts of the house furthest away from the actual primary heat duct. The living room is actually quite toasty and never fell below 70 degrees. At bedtime the Mrs. loudly proclaimed her official bedroom had now been moved to the living room area and by 10 PM she had claimed the couch and dug in with pillows, blankets, ear plugs and covered her head entirely in more pillows.

About half the total refugee cat population then switched residence from the bedding down counter to the couch as well. Last time I looked at her I saw a pile of blankets with four cats on top where the couch used to be.

At 1:30 I decided I could try and sleep for an hour or two myself after giving the furnace a good loading up. By 3:30 when I got back up the living room was still toasty but the furthest corners of the house had now fallen into the lower 50's. Going to sleep meant shutting down the little space heater I have going in the computer room and that along with allowing the furnace to burn down just an extra hour caused almost a 15 degree drop in that part of the house.

I'm tellin ya in a collapse situation people will be heating about one room only and the rest of the house can just stay cold. Even in the dark I can tell ya I have burned at least a normal weeks worth of wood in one day at the rate I been going.

After about half an hour I am now pushing above the 60 degree mark once again in the computer room so progress is being made.

There is something happening down the road at the trouble spot I mentioned in last night's post. The outside temp is now being reported as -8 and I noticed car lights down that way while I was loading the furnace up thirty minutes ago. I just went and checked again and the lights are still there but now they also have their hazard lights blinking. They are right next to a neighbor's house with maybe three other houses much closer to them than we are  so I am assuming they would go to one of those places first for an emergency. Without a full face covering of some kind I would not even attempt to walk that far and I wonder at this point if any of our vehicles will even start so I see no safe way to go and check on the situation.

I can only hope that who ever got stranded down there was prepared because without full Winter gear walking any distance at all would mean risking serious harm or worse right now.

On my way back in from the furnace Sasha (The QUEEN!!) decided it was time to go back outside. She rushed out the door as I came in. All I did was close the door and watch out the window and it took less than a minute for her to turn around and come right back to the door which I promptly opened for her.

She went straight to the bedding shelf and right back into her basket.

I have no idea how the critters in the barn have fared this night yet and I won't know until it gets a bit lighter out and for some of them I might not know until it warms up and they come out of their hidden holes.  I am sure the sheep are all fine they were kinda made for this type of weather and they have nice straw filled inside areas to get in to together.

We will see about the horses when the sun comes up.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!