The Holt Blog

It has been fun anticipating Christmas 2008. This year I got really into miniatures and had fun making decorations for my tiny tree, and a little friendly snowman. Ornaments are made from little beads, little paper garland that I made during the power outage, and christmas tree lights from a co-worker.

Here’s how I displayed my Christmas cards this year, just hung them from a piece of ribbon.

And here is Ben’s Christmas poncho that I crocheted!

Merry Christmas

On Thursday night, as I was sitting reading a book at 2AM in the morning, the power flickered briefly and went out.  As of Sunday afternoon, it’s still not back on!  There was a severe ice storm and more than a million people in New England are without power.  Most of our resident condo dwellers have long ago departed to seek warmer climes, but Jill and I have spent three days and nights without power in freezing weather!

Friday night we went out to pizza, as the town next to us had power.  All the restaurants were very crowded as immigrants from towns without power arrived for light, heat, and food.  Then Jill and I went to KMart, bought candles, and brushed our teeth.  Friday night was not that cold.

On Saturday we visited my in-laws and took showers, which was awesome!  I felt soo clean.

On Saturday night Jill and I played with our band in another town with power.  We did pretty well from what people said.  I should have some pictures soon.  We were hopeful that we’d have power when we got home, but it was still dark in our neighborhood.  Even less people had stuck around than the day before, but a few windows still remained lit by candlelight or generator-produced electric lights.

It was very cold last night.  It’s a good thing jill is such a good snuggler, or we might have become blocks of ice overnight.  It was hard to get up this morning because of all the dissipating heat.  Today we took a walk in the freezing air to get warm, and now we’re at a local coffee shop.  We’re still hoping power will be back for church tonight, but if not we will have an intimate fire-lit meeting at Hannah’s house!

One problem is the, um, toilet.  No power = no running water in our place, so for days we couldn’t flush.  It was pretty gross.  But then we got a five-gallon bucket from our relatives, and I filled it at a local stream and lugged it home.  So we were finally able to flush, even though each flush is quite a lot of work!  Yay!

None of our neighbors have power, and it’s interesting how we have all actually spoken to each other in the past few days.  On Friday night I spent a few hours talking to our Jewish neighbor about the Bible and Jewish history.  On Saturday several neighbors were outdoors trading news and stories.  Normally here in MA, barely anyone speaks to each other.  So while it’s very cold and that is hard to bear, everything else has been ok and even beneficial to our community.

The last two nights I took a walk, and God provided a beautiful full moon at just the right time for this “crisis”.  It was really nice out!  There were no lights to obscure the moonlight, so everything was bathed in a bright, mystic blue glow.  No flashlight needed!