I stayed up last night as long as I could, which was about 22:00. Karen woke me up when she came to bed, but I went right back to sleep.
Then, about 02:30, I was wakened by... silence. Then the shrill beeps of my UPS.
I stumbled into some clothes and shut down the computer and started looking for a flashlight. Luckily, Tyler was up, and he had already found one.
We'd had a thunderstorm with 80 MPH winds, and I'd slept through that. But I couldn't sleep through the silence. The power had gone off after the storm was past, probably knocking out some switching station further to the east of here.
There was some major tree damage next door and two doors down, old sycamore trees had lost many big branches. Our maples had done OK, though, just a sprinkling of older dead branches that had been left hanging by previous storms.
After a while I decided to go back to bed, but the silence wouldn't let me sleep. Toss and turn, etc etc. I finally got up and lit a candle and sat in the near-dark with the cat on my lap. Nice and peaceful... I almost dozed off, but the cat dozed first, and started kneading his sharp little claws in my groin. That lasted about two seconds...
Thouroughly awakened again, I decided to take a long, hot shower by candlelight. It was nice and relaxing, and I was sure that I could go right to sleep afterwards. I was wrong, of course. I started worrying about how Karen would get up on time... I would doze, then check the one battery-powered clock in the bedroom, then doze again.
The power finally came on about 04:45, and I could've reset the clocks and gone to sleep then, but I couldn't find the energy to reset the clocks, so I continued with the previous strategy until Karen got up.
After Karen got up, I felt relieved of all responsibility and I could finally go to sleep. And I did, for another three hours, wakening with a coughing fit.
And I'm beginning to get the old sinusitis, too. I've blown about a pound of green shot out of my head so far today, and there appears to be no end of it. So I need to call the doc and get some Zithromax before it get me down completely. I truly hate sinusitis. If I lay down with the left side of my head down, all of the fluids slowly percolate to the left maxillary sinus; then when I return to
the right side, the reverse occurs. There is about a three-minute grace period there where the side that is being drained feels really good and the side that is being drained into doesn't really feel too bad. Then I put up with the pain about another five minutes, then I have to turn again.
As it progresses (which I hope to avoid!) the whole process becomes very painful and the drainage occurs more and more slowly until it essentially stops. Pretty soon the only way to be comfortable is to be upright without any motion of my head whatsoever. This doesn't work very well.
And, as I'm writing this, we've got a pretty strong storm moving in from due west; according to the radar on the weather channel, it looks like it might be pretty nasty. The sky in the west is an ominous slate-gray right now.
Tyler finally got enough sleep, I think. He's slept about 20 hours out of the last 24; he's not done much sleeping since he's been up here.
I think that I'll upload this, call my doc and go back to bed now. More tomorrow...