So, 1 week +12 hours give or take, and power has returned.  Unfortunately, cable is still out, so no XBox for me tonight.  We leave for Texas tomorrow morning.  Let the fun begin!

In all the craziness brought about by the lack of power (still none, by the way), I have neglected to relay an important announcement. My brother and his wife had their baby! Landon Ross Miller was born Friday the 15th of December at 11:09 PM.  Everyone is doing well, and we can't wait to meet him next week.

Congratulations, Bro!

So, we still don't have power, but things are looking up.  Let me give you the rough timetable so far.

• Thursday, Dec 14th ~8pm: Wind starts picking up. Lights begin to dip occasionally.
• ~10:30: Power goes out.  Ticked because I was in the middle of a Halo match.
• ~11:30: By this time, the wind is really blowing.  The sound of branches breaking off can be heard occasionally throughout the surrounding woods.
• Friday, Dec 15th ~12:30am: The wind is blowing like crazy.  The gusts are bending the trees to an alarming degree.  We decide we should move downstairs in case one decides to fall.  This wakes Jenna up and she decides we are playing some kind of game.  She spends the next several hours honking our noses.
• ~2:00am:  I am VERY concerned about falling trees.  With each gust, the sounds of breaking trees can be heard.
• ~4:00am:  Jenna is finally asleep.  The wind seems to have subsided.  We go back upstairs to be comfortable.
• ~morning: Damage is surveryed.  Nothing major.  Check around the neighborhood.  Nothing terrible.  Patiently wait for power to be restored.
• ~noon: It's getting cold.  I look for some firewood.  All I find is soaked through.
• ~3pm: still no warmth.  We decide to bail.  We call the Flints and head to Bellingham.
• ~7pm: We arrive in Bellingham, warm up, and stay the night.
• Saturday, Dec 16th: Head back to our house to check on the cats.  The daylight reveals the devestation of the infrastructure.  Trees are down everywhere.  Powerlines are a tangled mess.  The power's going to take a while.  We make sure the cats are OK, and head back to Bellingham.
• Sunday, Dec 17th: Attend Jeff's church and locate a generator that meets our criteria.  Big enough to run the furnace, small enough to fit in the trunk.  Head back to the house and fire it up.  Becky took Jenna to a friend's house while the house warmed up.
• 8pm: the house reaches 60 degrees, our criteria for staying the night, so Becky brings Jenna back and we put her to bed.
• 10pm: the house reaches normal temperature.
• Monday, Dec 18th 12:30am: The furnace stops working and the house begins cooling fast (the structure itself has not yet heated up to normal)
• 1:00am: We head to Becky's friends house and spend the rest of the night.
• Daytime: Jenna and Becky hang out at her friends house, and I go into work to see about arranging furnace repairs and do other errands in addition to keeping work from falling too far behind.
• Evening: return to Becky's friends house, and have a nice evening playing with Jenna and xbox. Becky and friend go check on cats, which are freaking out, but otherwise doing fine.
• Tuesday, Dec 19th: Some work.  The furnace guys show up and confirm my diagnosis of a faulty flame sensor.  Furnace working again.
• Evening: Head to another one of Becky's friends for some nice dinner.
• 8:00pm: I get a call from my realtor, who just got power and offers his huge generator.
• ~9:30pm: Big generator hooked up and running.  Now we can run some lights and other stuff. Additionally, it runs all night on a tank of gas, rather than having to fill every 5 hours.  Also discover cable service is out.  No xbox.
• Wednesday, Dec 20th morning: wake up from a very pleasant and successful night. Fill tank on the generator and go out to get more gas.  Then head into work.
• 1pm: Becky and Jenna join me at work for some lunch.

In somewhat unrelated news, I saw what I believe to be a couple of river otters swimming in the creek yesterday evening.  The reason I think they were otters was they looked like otters, and the tracks I found in the snow look like otter tracks. I'll have to keep my eyes open for them and maybe get some pictures.

I've gotten lots of inquiries lately where, for now, the answer is simply, "we're alive".  If you weren't aware, the Seattle area was pounded last Thursday by an incredibly fierce windstorm.  Over two thirds of the houses in the area lost power, which equates to over a million customers (houses/businesses). We live in one of the areas hardest hit by the storm.

Luckily, we, our cats, our home, our cars, and everything else all escaped unharmed.  However, we have been without electricity since Thursday night.  We decided the best course of action with a one-year-old was to get the heck out of there.  We stayed with the Flints Friday and Saturday night.  After a brief period of warmth on Sunday brought by a generator, we are now staying at a friends house in nearby Kirkland who regained power on Sunday.

I'll update more when I have more time.  For now, I'm working on getting the furnace fixed.  Either running it continuously for about 8 hours damaged part of the ignition system, or running it from a generator screwed something up.

Hopefully, everything will be cleared up in time for us to make a Saturday flight to Texas for the holidays, but they're saying it may be Friday or Saturday before our power gets turned back on.

Today is Jason Owens's birthday.  Jason is a buddy of mine from way back.  I believe we met before preschool sometime, but I honestly can't remember.  We shared all the years of school together, even through college.  I remember turning on the water hose in his backyard so we could try to turn it into Degoba (sp?) so we could play Star Wars properly.

Since college, we haven't been able to get together much.  We're supposed to get together over Christmas though, which I'm looking forward to.

Every year, it was a tradition for some of our closest friends to get together at Jason's house for his birthday.  We'd spend the night playing slaughter-ball, football 500, and topping it off with a viewing of "¡Three Amigos!".

Happy Birthday, man.  I was going to scan an old picture for this entry, but I haven't found the box with the old pictures in it yet, since moving.

Today, my little girl turns 1 year old!  I've been teaching her to answer how old she is by pointing a finger in the air and saying "one!".  It's been an incredible year.  Jenna's been such a trooper over the past few months as we've moved across the country.

We got her a new forward-facing car seat, since she now meets that criteria.  We also got a cute little chair she can sit in that is electronic and does all kinds of fun-ness.  We made her a little cake and let her go at it.  She wasn't as destructive as I thought she might be, but it was fun.  Then we had a bubble bath, and I made lots of bubble hats for her that were hilarious.

For those wondering...  She walks excellently now, and chases the cats all over the house.  She's got 7 or 8 teeth.  I've lost track of all the things she can say. She'll repeat (or at least try) almost any word you ask her to say. She can ask for foods that she likes (apple, banana, broccoli, cheese).  She even says, "cheese, please".  She identifies the basic animals (kitty (sometimes referred to as "meow-meow"), puppy, bear, bird, bee, mouse, etc.  but horse is the cutest-sounding), and (when coaxed) she can tell you what sounds some of them make.  She can identify basic body parts.  She loves pointing at noses, even those of stuffed animals, but her favorite is "toes".  I went in one morning to wake her up, only to find her rolling around in her crib.  She looked at me with a big grin, grabbed her toes and said, "toes".  She dances to music, and plays peekabo (even with herself in the mirror). She will do things that you ask her to, like "go find a ball", "go find the kitties", "put on a hat", or "make Farmer Tad play the banjo".  She loves to hide, especially when you're trying to dress her.  She's cuckoo for bathtime.  I'm so proud of how well she's doing.  But,we wish she'd sleep better.  She's doing better than a month ago, but still gets up at least once during the night usually.

I've got lots of pictures and video from the day that will trickle in as I have time, but here's a cameraphone shot of her in her new car seat.

It hasn't snowed any more. In fact, yesterday was a clear, beautiful day.  You can check out the photos I uploaded yesterday for all the snowy goodness, as well as some overdue photos since Halloween.  But, the temperature hasn't gone up, so all the snow is still here.  I even went outside, got some snow, and made some snow ice cream, which I haven't had in ages. (It doesn't snow enough in Central Texas to get clean snow)

My smart card reader is broken, so I don't have remote access, which makes it hard to work from home.  I decided to go into work today to try to get another one.  It's supposed to snow more tonight, so I wanted to be ready, and not feel like I need to go in.  The way into work was interesting.  There were still lots of cars in ditches or stuck going up hills, etc.  But, I can't find a card reader, so I'll probably head home soon.  I don't want to risk getting stuck on the way home.  So, I'm going to queue up some work for the rest of the day and head out.

It snowed yesterday morning, and evening, resulting in quite the winter wonderland.  We didn't get as much as Jeff did up in Bellingham, but any snow to us is alot.

Also, last night while we were feeding Jenna, we heard what sounded like firecrackers going off.  Seconds later, the whole house shook with a huge thud.  It took me a few seconds to realize what had happened.  Several large branches had broken off one of the trees on the northeast side of the house, and one of them had hit the roof on the way down.  I believe the only damage was to the gutters, but I'll have to see.  There is still a large piece of the branch on the roof.

The branches don't look very big when they are way up in the tree, but when they get to the ground, they are small trees themselves by our Central Texas standards.