Reprieve! And Storm News

Okay, so my mom is happy to get her gift by the Epiphany/Noche Buena/
12th Night, or January 6th for those whose xmases end with the 25th
of December.

I am not a fast knitter. Nope, no way, no how. I planned on only
one knitted item this winter, socks for mom. Then some hats for
others, a scarf or three, and a couple of stockings kinda fell into
the lineup...Oopsie?

Well, I do have one finished sock. As soon as my grocery store
regains power (maybe you all read/heard about the massive wind/rain
storm we just had?) I'm off to find the tea part of her gift. There
must always be tea in my mom's gift. This is now a given.

So, yeah, the storm.
I hear there was much damage and much loss of electricity. During
the massive part of the wind storm, our plastic shed-where the
lawnmower lives-discombubilated, but Andy has since fixed it. No
trees fell, and we only lost power for a couple hours, maybe between
2 and 4 AM. I know, I was woken by the plastic shed at 2 AM. Then
when all was settling back down we all heard these immense popping
noises and it got really dark outside. REALLY dark outside.

By 5 AM, however, the power was back on and I didn't really think
much of anything...I was too much of a zombie girl for the first half
of the day, except for the quiet. The wind had been buffeting
Seattle for about three days prior to all hell breaking loose, so the
quiet was a little weird. Almost, but not quite like pulling into a
quiet anchorage after 10 days of rough weather and big slaloming
waves on the way to Hawai'i from Mexico (the first 19 days were a snap).

Downtown had all it's lights on, and I figured all went well. By
9:30 I was amazed my mom hadn't left 10,000 messages, what with the
death and destruction that had been reported! Mostly by car radio, I
heard, seeing as most people didn't have power for their TVs and the
paper did not get printed since they had no power there either.
People wandered in far more dazed and confused than I was as they had
to battle trees to get to their smashed vehicles and wade through
ginormous puddles to get to taxis or busses.

Andy and I made the big mistake of going out to try to get food, or
at least groceries last night. That's when we saw just how many
parts of our area were still quite dark and spooky. Not to mention
where all the nice houses with the really nice decorations are!
Let's just say there was a bit of traffic and 1.5 hour waits at every
restaurant we tried. Frozen pizza and netflix to the rescue!