I'm with Ron. Freddy's the one with the accordian.

Thank goodness Ron had proper footwear on.  It would’ve really ruined the moment had he been in his hiking boots.  The occasion was what I like to call “Schnitzel Night” which is really a benefit for the scholarship fund of the local Austrian cultural club.  The great thing about this night is that the schnitzel is as big as your head.

This is a regulation sized plate

I was a very good girl and brought containers so this schnitzel actually lasted for a couple of meals.  And of course, if I had eaten all of that, it would be all the more difficult to maintain my girlish figure.  That’s important when you’re the prettiest girl in the village.

Now, I know you’re all also waiting on the contest results.  The winning guess to how cold my house got during the power outage is Mike with a guess of 48 deg.  The actual lowest temperature recorded was 46.9.  Thanks to Cindy for the coldest guess at 37.5 deg.  I got even colder just reading that guess.  At 46.9, I could already see my breath when indoors.  Brisk.

To get everyone in the holiday mood, I’ll leave you with this.  Sorry it’s blurry.  I guess my camera just couldn’t make out what was going on.  Hiver likes to drink from the Christmas tree . . .

Merry Christmas from Hiver's Butt

The power trucks are coming! The power trucks are coming!

Sunday morning it was very sunny.  I opened my front door to let the sun in and went upstairs to brush my teeth.  When I finished brushing my teeth, I called my friend Margaret on the phone as we were trying to coordinate our reciprocal tree clean up.  I walked downstairs and looked through my open front door.  As Clement Moore would say, what did my wondering eyes behold?  A porch light on the house across the street.  It took a moment to register.  I stood very still so as not to scare the light away, then I ran to my kitchen where I have never in my life been as happy to see a flashing 12:00, 12:00, 12:00 on my stove clock.  Woohoo!  Electricity!  I stopped and the previous quiet was broken by the sound of my furnace.  Yay!  Heat to go with the light.  I called the neighbors who had abandoned ship and they too were very happy and started making their way back.  I went outside to work in the yard a bit.  There was still quite a lot of clean up to do.  I decided to work on this smaller stick first.

This stick is about 3 inches in diameter

The stick was in deep.  I had to work it around to get it out of the ground.  I compared the muddy line to my hiking boot and the stick was at least 9 inches into the ground, probably more like 12 inches.  My hiking boot is 9-10 inches and the mud smear was definitely longer than that.  Charlie and Marg came and we cleaned up my brush pile and moved it to the curb.  I decided it was time for a hot shower, with lights.  Alas, when I went back inside, the power went out again.  It had been on for 2 hours and the house was already up to its non-power-outage temperature.  I turned on the water and it was hot so I went ahead with my shower and when I got out, the power came back on again so we only had about a 20 minute blink.  The power’s been back on ever since.  I would’ve posted this news sooner, but I have another problem that is still making communication with the outside world a bit difficult for the moment.

All indications are that this is my phone-internet-television line

It’s good to have neighbors who don’t believe in secure wifi.  Their wifi seems to be stable now so at least I will have internet access until AT&T comes to re-connect me next week.  I’m very happy to have my power back on and I’ll survive with less than optimal internet access for a week.  As of this moment, there are still anywhere from 29,000 – 52,000 people without power in CT depending on whose statistics you believe.  The power company says they’ll have all customers powered up by Wednesday.  Wow, I hope so.

On the up side, you learn who your friends are.  Among others, friends include: anyone who will let you sit in their lighted, heated house when they have better things to do; anyone who lets you use their gas heated hot water for showers; anyone who gives you a hot meal; anyone who helps you cut tree branches.  I’ve gotten to talk to a bunch of neighbors who I never had before; most of them are vey nice.  Yesterday morning, I went out for breakfast (I’m this close to being able to order “the usual”), and met some people who lived around the corner.  We are all now keeping the faith together.  You could tell power is coming back on in our town; the restaurant was only about half full.  We’re still over 50% out in our town this morning, but supposedly we will be 99% on by this evening, according to the power company.  I hope whoever is saying that is not the same person who told me about tree branch removal.

As I’ve crossed into day 8 without power, I’ve been thinking that I should not be the only one enjoying this.  Cindy does not want me to lose my sense of humor or adventure so, I will run yet another one of my little contests.  This round will of course have a power outage theme to it.

The Contest:

Guess the lowest temperature I’ve recorded in my house and win a gift card.

My little LL Bean clock/thermometer reports temperature to the nearest tenth of a degree so your guesses should likewise.  Email me your guesses, or submit them as a comment.  I must get on now; time to cut up tree branches.  This is how I keep warm during the day.

My town is doing an excellent job of posting emergency info.  I’ve learned that trash pick up will take place tomorrow.  Therefore, after I post this post, I will go home and chuck out everything in my fridge so it can be picked up tomorrow.  Then maybe I’ll cut my big pile of brush in the back yard.  The town is going to send around chipper trucks and take away all the debris, but we must cut it and pile curbside.  I spent most of yesterday cutting up the pile in the front yard so that’s done.  The exercise keeps me warm.  Last night, as my flash light started to blink, I remembered my headlamp and started wearing that around.  I feel like a miner, but I can see really well with it.

The power company says 99% of all customers should have power back by Sunday.  That’s all they’ll say.  I think there’s just too much work to do to be able to give specific estimates to specific locales. Weather.com says it’s supposed to be at least 50 every day until then and not go below 30 over night.  So, I guess I’ll continue to survive.  I must go now.  Time to empty the fridge.

Click to view slideshow.

No telling when we’ll get power back.  Fortunately I have a few friends who are on natural gas so I’m hoping to wash my hair with hot water tomorrow.  That will be fun.  Some poor people are moving in to the house kitty corner across the street from me.  I hope they get their bed set up before dark.  I think it’ll be a cold night on the floor for them.  I met them on my way to the cafe.  They seemed very nice.  What a day to move in though.  The mailman told us that the Springfield area is much worse than we are and he said, we were pretty bad in our town.  Great.  Schools are closed until at least Thursday.  In the past 2 months we’ve had an earthquake, a hurricane and now a Halloween snowstorm.  We never had this much action before Charlie and Margaret moved here.  Interesting.  Hope all is well with my readers.  The cats and I are coping and keeping each other warm so don’t worry about us.

There are a lot more pumpkin beers than there used to be.  Until about 3 years ago, I had only ever seen 2 brands of pumpkin beer, Blue Moon and Shipyard.  I prefer the Blue Moon to the Shipyard but I have to admit, Shipyard has better packaging.  Today I noticed there are about a dozen pumpkin beers and one pumpkin hard cider (Woodchuck).  Just walking through, I noticed pumpkin beers by:  Blue Moon, Shipyard, Shock Top, Post Road, Dog Fish Head, Saranac and Smutty Nose (don’t you just love the name?).  Those are just the ones I remember.  I’m sure there were a few others.  Perhaps a tasting festival is in order.  It seems like a very Oktoberfesty kind of thing to do and besides what’s more Octobery than pumpkins?  Hmm, this is a very intriguing idea.

Addendum:

I did a search on “pumpkin beer” and  I found an interesting new (to me) site which reviews beers.  I learned that there are many dozens of pumpkin beers.  I also learned, much to my dismay, that Blue Moon is a Coors/Molson product.  Molson is fine.  Coors not so much.  This may explain something though.  The pumpkin beer I picked up this week does not taste like I remember it.  It’s definitely a bit skunky.  The beer review site ranks the Dog Fish Head, Smutty Nose and Saranac above the Blue Moon.  I feel better knowing which direction to go next.

Old Towne Graveyard in Ridgefield, CT

This is the Titicus section of the Old Town Graveyard.  The Titicus section is the oldest section.  Somewhere in this cemetery is one of our Revolutionary War era ancestors, Hannah Jelliffe.  Hannah would be an aunt of ours, with a fair number of “greats” preceding the aunt.  I found through some research and other family trees that Hannah Jelliffe is buried in this cemetery.  Jelliffe is an old CT family name.  As far as I can tell, there has been a Jelliffe of our direct line in CT from around 1707.  Since it is not so far from me, I decided I would go down to Ridgefield sometime and try to find her.  It may sound kind of ghoulish, but cemeteries are pretty peaceful, very parklike and scenic.  I don’t mind a day out in the cemetery.  See the pictures below of the family plot in Massachusetts if you aren’t convinced about that.

Anyways, this past weekend presented a good window of opportunity.  The last few weekends, I’ve been helping some friends of mine who are relocating from Ohio (ironically they live just a few miles from where some other Jelliffes and DeButtses are buried).  They’ve been looking for houses and schools and all those other fun things associated with moving and since I’m a local connection and they are very long time friends (not old), of course I’m helping them out.  This meant I suddenly had a random Sunday with nothing but Me Time so I decided that was the day.  My friend Annette called me to say her husband and sons were all occupied and maybe we could do something.  I told her of my cemetery quest and she said she’d join me so I picked up Annette and off we went.  From Annette’s house it took just over an hour to get to the cemetery.  We tried a couple of different entrances which was exciting since the “roads” were old, low and rutted.  Little Jetta was a trooper.  Eventually we found a driveway in relatively good condition, drove in and parked.  We had a hand drawn sketch of the cemetery with the various sections and entrances labeled.  We started searching in what looked like the oldest section  since Hannah died in 1862, but we weren’t entirely certain we were in the right area.  Eventually I backtracked to the entrance and found a clear and specific landmark so we got our bearings and were finally certain we were in the correct section.  Alas, we didn’t find Hannah.  Either she got married and we were looking for the wrong name, her stone was unreadable or it had fallen down.  Many of the old stones were so worn simply from a couple of hundred years of weather that they were truly unreadable.  You could see there was writing on the stone, but that was it.  Other stones had fallen down and were simply too heavy or too wedged in to lift up and examine.  We searched for about an hour and we’re sure we hit the whole section but we could not find our Hannah.  It was a bright sunny day so it was at least pleasant, if hot, walking around the cemetery.  I’ll do some more research and make sure I had the right name and try again someday.  I know Hannah’s in there.  I’ll find her.  Annette and I headed back to her house.  We stopped at a small cafe and had a nice lunch and then went home to hang out.  After a nice dinner with Annette, and some of the boys who had returned home by then, I headed back to my house to feed the cats and close out the weekend.

Hannah’s brother James Jelliffe is our direct ancestor and he did fight in the Revolution. He was born and died in Norwalk, CT and was in the Coast Guard, which was call the Coast Guard even then according to some records I’ve found.  I haven’t found any information on where he might be buried, but I’ll keep looking for him.  So far, James is the only ancestor in our direct line who I can confirm definitely served in the Revolution.  There seems to be anecdotal evidence that a DeButts served in the American Revolution.  Henry DeButts is the only DeButts I have found listed as a Revolutionary war veteran but I can not find a connection to our Debutts line.  If Henry is a direct ancestor, he would be our great, great, great, great, great grandfather, if I haven’t lost count there.  I’ll continue to work that angle but in the meantime, I’ll keep trying to find Hannah and to find James.  I think it would be really cool to get a picture of our Revolutionary War ancestor’s final resting place.  Watch this space.

In addition to a public restroom, they had a bar.  Gary had been so nice to drive me around all day and treat me to lunch, I insisted that I would buy him a beer.  Any idea where I was?  To my knowledge, Waldo has never been here.