Power is back on

Our electricity just came on about 15 minutes ago (just before 6:00 p.m.). It went off just after midnight, so that's an 18-hour outage. The winds last night were pretty strong, but we didn't have any damage. A couple of big branches broke out of an ailing apple tree in the back yard. It's one that we meant to get cut down in the fall. Now we mean to cut it down in the spring.

We didn't lose any roof tiles. A few limbs blew out of other trees around the yard, but nothing to write home about. In fact, we haven't heard of any major local damage from the storm, though winds around here were reported to be as high as 125 kph, or 78 mph. Our bedroom window sounded like it was buckling under the force of the wind, or the pressure differences between inside and outside. It was enough to make us worry...

Thank goodness for the wood-burning stove and the butane cook stove. Today we had a lunch of leftovers, but hot leftovers. And we were able to heat water for tea this morning. Walt made a fire in the wood stove first thing so the house has been warm all day.

The neighbor across the street, Chantal, called twice today to see if we had current or not. She wanted to make sure the problem at her house wasn't hers alone. She sounded pretty exasperated when she called the second time, at about 4:30 p.m. I assured her that we had checked our circuits and confirmed that there just wasn't any current coming to the house.

I also told her I assumed that since our mayor lives right next door, she would be doing everything possible to get our electricity turned back on as soon as possible. Chantal harrumphed and said she didn't understand why it would take so long. I'm beginning to understand why the neighbors find her and her mother difficult to deal with.

It turned out that just three hamlets — La Renaudière, La Chotinière, and La Besnardière — were without current. That's probably not more than 30 houses. Another neighbor, Daniel, told me that François down at the end of our road had electricity all day. The story is that a wire down at La Chotinière was taken down by a falling tree or branch. It took them all day to get to repairing it, but it's done now.

We are happy because there's a film on TV tonight that we wanted to watch. It's a historical docu-fiction about king Louis XIII's finance minister, the cardinal Mazarin, and his relationship with the queen, Anne of Austria, after the kings death in 1642. Louis XIII and Anne were Louis XIV's parents, and he was the Sun King. Exciting, eh?