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<p>That depends on whether you’re a good cook or not. Speaking as someone whose family refers to her hamburgers as hockey pucks, I’ll bet I could rise to the challenge with pancakes.</p>
<p>Got six inches of snow and mess dumped on top of us last night. I waited for an hour and ten minutes for a bus in Manhattan, where it was just freezing rain. Got drenched. HOWEVER, I finally got a bus. It had heat. I got a seat, although the hundreds of other people waiting didn’t, and when the bus started moving, there was no traffic!!! I had a perfectly normal commute this morning and am hoping that normalcy will return because if I have very many more days of commuting 5-6 hours a day, I am going to go stark, raving mad.</p>
<p>Would my cc friends please join hands and hum together, sending their powerful energy to the MTA in hopes of getting the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel reopened so the commute for people on Staten Island can be eased? Thanks!</p>
<p>I can’t imagine commuting 5-6 hours a day.</p>
<p>My commute this morning was to walk down to the basement.</p>
<p>Well, BCEagle, it’s not doing wonders for my kidneys, either, but I’m very hopeful it will all be resolved this week.</p>
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<p>I heard someone estimating what it would take to pump out flooded water considering the volume and pump capacity. I don’t remember the details but the task was enormous and not any time soon. ZM, sorry for your difficulties.</p>
<p>I don’t have it so bad Igloo, believe me. I’ve seen really bad and I want no part of that.</p>
<p>My aunt and uncle in Paramus, N.J. just got their electric back yesterday. The kicker is that their daughter’s family has been living with them while daughter’s house in Pompton Lakes N.J. is being rebuilt (and elevated) after being severely damaged by Hurricane Irene flooding over a year ago. Thankfully the lakes were lowered by the state the weekend before Nancy or things could have been really bad for them if the house in Pompton Lakes was flooded again! They’re hurricaned out.</p>
<p>MIL in Westchester had electricity restored on Tues. She was the last of our “Senior Camp” members at our house. Her entire town, 100% was without power. These are the same people who scream and yell at the utilities when they try to trim their precious trees. Spent Sunday hunting down line crews. My aunt’s home and 3 of her neighbors were without electricity because a tree fell on a service wire and tripped the transformer. The surrounding homes in the senior citizen complex already had service restored. I knew that they would remain out of power until the bitter end and already reported the pole and transformer number to the utility. When I found some linemen from South Carolina, they were quite amused at my assessment and followed me to the transformer. They had quite a laugh when they told me I was correct and after calling in to the utility, fixed the problem! I’m sure they will tell that story a few times. I am so grateful to them. It really is impossible in the Northeast due to topography, aging electrical transmission stations and foliage to have sufficient crews to be available to restore individual service as quickly as we would like.</p>
<p>Re: Pancakes are fluffy, silver dollars are heavy. All I know is this snow is so heavy all my trees and bushes now have branches trailing down to the ground.</p>
<p>I hate the way Con Ed trims trees, half the time they end up killing them.</p>
<p>Too often people plant trees and bushes, erect fences, place toolsheds, etc. in electric easements that end up getting in way of electric crews and slow things down when linemen are trying to restore electric after storms. In Florida electric crews during emergencies would use their big trucks to just drive over junk in their way in easements. Too, many electric companies move electric poles replacement time to front of homes streetside instead of keeping electric lines in back of houses that were difficult to access and service because of all the stuff placed improperly in easements. When everybody in town is screaming about getting electric restored the electric crews aren’t going to wait for people to move stuff or open gates for the utilities easements.</p>
<p>OK, this thread has convinced me to finally buy flood insurance, since our home is officially in the flood zone, now that they’ve redrawn the maps and moved it over so the flood zone ends one street beyond us. The flood zone used to end at the highway (we’re 3 streets in from the highway). Our home is totally at ground level and has never been flooded since it was built about 60 or so years ago, but all this crazy weather has made me VERY nervous, especially after we watched the tsunami in Japan. </p>
<p>Amazingly, premiums are quite reasonable (probably because of the low risk), $376 for $250K/$100K in coverage with $1K deductible. Calling agent to purchase today.</p>
<p>I’m so sorry for those who are suffering from these storms. It’s really unfathomable. :(</p>
<p>In the northwest, we also have most power lines above ground and many trees.
The trees I’ve planted around my house, including on our planting strip( which isn’t technically part of our property, but we are allowed to plant it) are well away from our electrical line & supposedly our neighbor whose pin oak could cause a problem for us is going to get it pruned this winter. It really is the responsibility of landowners to make sure their trees wont cause problems and to maintain them, but I also agree that when the utility disregards proper pruning technique and just hacks at the tree, they may kill the tree leading to its forced removal which may cause instability in the soil and cause even more problems down the road.</p>
<p>I’ve read that the expense of burying the lines is prohibitive, over $1million for each mile.
But I imagine that perhaps the time has come.
[Smart</a> Grid: Isn’t it time for the grid to go underground?](<a href=“http://www.smartgridnews.com/artman/publish/Delivery_Asset_Management/Isn-t-it-time-for-the-grid-to-go-underground-5257.html/?fpt#.UJvlV3y9KSM]Smart”>http://www.smartgridnews.com/artman/publish/Delivery_Asset_Management/Isn-t-it-time-for-the-grid-to-go-underground-5257.html/?fpt#.UJvlV3y9KSM)</p>
<p>BCEagle, we worked out of our basement for nine years. That was long enough for my husband to almost go stark raving mad! We finally built an addition in 2008 so that we’re above-ground. Improved his mood tremendously.</p>
<p>We got a wet, heavy snow overnight and now it’s pouring. Blech. It may be a long winter.</p>
<p>zooser–no wonder you are planning a vacation in the tropics.</p>
<p>YIKES</p>
<p>Thanks to all who provided answers to my electrical questions from yesterday. Our power went out yesterday evening, the whole neighborhood. It was actually quite beautiful last night. It looked like fairyland with everything covered in snow, no artificial light but it was still possible to see well because of all the snow. And it was incredibly quiet.</p>
<p>I’m working in the public library in the next town. Our town was down to 10% without power yesterday, today it’s 20%. No real estimate of when we will get it back. ConEd gives our arbitrary dates, the same date to everyone. And the dates keep moving.</p>
<p>I can’t complain around here about losing power. I was actually feeling guilty about not having lost it, because so many people have been without it for so long. But it’s a real pain.</p>
<p>ecmother- glad to hear SC linemen were helpful. Have heard rumors which I hope are untrue, that some utility workers from down here were turned away because they are non-union. We deal with hurricanes frequently down here but at least when our power was out, it wasn’t cold outside. Hope that situation improves soon, but truth is our church is still sending teams to rebuild homes damaged/destroyed in Katrina. Recovery can take a long time! Prays are with everyone in northeast.</p>
<p>Well, I can work in the office too. I didn’t want to go in because I had a tennis match at noon. I’m going into the office in a little while after answering some emails. My home setup is nicer for development work than the office setup. I have a 27 inch iMac, a Nehalem desktop and a MacBook Pro. The 27 inch iMac screen is fabulous.</p>
<p>On line crews: an idea for an app. You take pictures of where you think the electrical problems are and submit them to the power company so that they can better assess problems and prioritize them. Something that take 1 minute to fix could get priority if there are a bunch of them in a neighborhood.</p>
<p>I know that this isn’t a tragedy, but I found it sad.</p>
<p>[Staten</a> Island’s Old Orchard Light, a New York Harbor stalwart for 119 years, is swept away | SILive.com](<a href=“Staten Island's Old Orchard Light, a New York Harbor stalwart for 119 years, is swept away - silive.com”>Staten Island's Old Orchard Light, a New York Harbor stalwart for 119 years, is swept away - silive.com)</p>
<p>I get it… I was inexplicably sad when the face of the Old Man of the Mountain fell off in NH. :-(</p>
<p>Sent from my DROID RAZR using CC</p>
<p>Or when Big Tex burned at the Texas State Fair this year.</p>