I won’t blame this on Mike Haddad. After all, the meteorological data at his fingertips doesn’t actually amount to a crystal ball or anything. When he didn’t seem all that alarmed on Thursday evening, I decided it was no big deal. My one precaution was to move my wife’s Jeep to the bottom of the driveway, as the surface was already getting a little slippery, making the idea of backing down in the dark the next morning quite ominous. Why not stay home? For her career position, that’s not an option (though in truly ugly weather, I usually drive her).

The power went out at our place at around 10:30PM. I was working on writing a best-of 2008 music column, and while the laptop battery had an hour or so left, the cable modem and wireless router function kinda poorly with the lack of electrons. So I pulled out my mini-light and my copy of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (which at my current reading rate, I should have completed sometime shortly before next 4th of July). There was a light tapping sound on the windows, indicating that the freezing rain was still having its way. An hour or so of Wallace-parsing had me drained, so off to bed.

The bombs began to go off between two and three in the morning. The sound of the tree-tops snapping off and hitting the ground was interspersed with the heavier thud of trees tipping over. Because we live on a hill, each event was followed by five or ten seconds what might be described as the contents of a giant rain-stick being poured onto the ground. It was the smashed ice chunks rolling over the frozen ground. Though we did have a large tree topple over from the woods across nearly half of our yard, the largest blow came when a large branch broke loose from a tree, coming down to rip the the power and television cables and the power meter right off the side of the house. Also lost in that incident was a light right above the meter. All that’s left are two bare wires sticking out of the side of the house.

After several hours of this, I began to wonder if there would be any trees left standing. The activity began to subside not long before daybreak, when we were finally able to afix our eyes to the amazing new outdoor landscape. ‘Surreal’ just about summed it up. The branch that took out the power line had come to rest on the top of my Mini Cooper, leaving several large dents in the roof. To be honest, I was just glad that the tree didn’t come through our bedroom window.

As mentioned above, my wife had to go to work…so I had to drive her. Before leaving, there was one task that I had to deal with: the basement. I had to take a peek at what I knew was down there. Yep, about six inches of water. Apparently, sump pumps have that same pesky trouble as modems and routers.

After a phone call to the police, who informed my wife that just about every road in the Monadnock region was closed, we loaded ourselves into the Jeep and headed for Antrim. If the initial quarter mile from the center of New Ipswich was any indication, this ride going to be something of an adventure. We would usually take New Hampshire Rte 123 over to Peterborough, but one look while coming down the hill and it was fairly obvious that it was impassible (something confirmed by Monadnock Review writer Garen Daly).

We did make it all the way through Jaffrey, Peterborough, and finally Antrim, but that involved much slaloming around downed treetops. We also had to go under several trees that had fallen across the road but were held up by the wires that hadn’t already been pulled down. I usually enjoy a 4WD drive through bad weather, but this was definitely pushing the limits.

With the wife dropped off safely at work, I spent the rest of the day up in the Concord area, attempting to track down a generator. Right…me and about a thousand other people. Workers at Lowes and Home Depot made references of generator shipments later in the day, but they didn’t have a whole lot of hope in their voice. I had absolutely no luck that day.

Saturday brought with it a host of other problems, mostly having to do with lack of working mechanical systems. In our house, no power means no water, no toilet-flushing, and just a little heat (we do have a propane-fired “woodstove” in the living room and the gas cookstove does work with a match). We definitely needed water. Now here’s where my laziness and tendency to procrastinate paid off. I had four empty Coll’s Farm 5-gallon water containers out in the garage, because of course I just couldn’t drag myself out there to get refills. We filled them at my wife’s workplace, so at least we had a crude method of dealing with toilets. After a nice lunch at the Hillsborough Diner (Hillsborough being the only town in the area with power), and a trip to the grocery store, we hauled our loot home.

In the middle of all of this, one of my wife’s sons located a generator for us…at a Home Depot in Bridgewater, Mass. Since my stepson and his girlfriend are based out of Braintree, we chose Burlington as a meeting point. After dinner at the Flatbread Pizza Company, we drove all the way back home to begin the fun of waking up Mr. Sump Pump.

Let me tell you, wading through 14 inches of icy-cold water is not my idea of a good time. I didn’t have any tall boots or waders so we attempted to duct tape some trash bags to my legs. Gee, on TV all of those products are leakproof….Wrong!!! Anyway, I got the pump plugged in, changed out of my now soaked pants and sneakers, and got the generator fired up. That was more than enough for one day. A nice glass of scotch in front of the woodstove was in order.

Despite the heat inefficiency of our house (hey, it was built in 1825!), the temperature seems to be hovering somewhere between 40 and 50 degrees. Not too bad. The down comforter helps for sleeping. On the weekend we tooks showers at the wife’s workplace. During the week, I’ve been using the old pitcher of hot water and a washcloth method. Man, it’s seems so romantic in the movies.

As I write this, we still don’t have power. In fact, I’ve heard a rumor that PSNH has stated that their goal is to have everybody back online by Christmas day. I think they’re talking about us.