New Skylight...

The tree didn't fall and hit the house. As a matter of fact, it's still standing. Alot of branches fell and now we have a new skylight in the garge. It's a small one though and my husband patched it up. It's a temporary patch that will last until spring.

The truck suffer a few dings. The large branch that fell on it barely missed the back window and the light. So the damage from last nights storm is minimal.

That's more than I could say about alot of people in the "boonies". On the other side of the mountains, where a foot of snow has fallen, there is no power. Fortunately, most of these people have wood heat (to melt snow for water) so they won't freeze. Some already have back up generators (from learning from the many times they've lost power in the past), and it's cold enough to throw their frozen and refrigerated food outside without any problems - as long as they use a cooler.

My parents, who live higher up into the woods are also without power. They too have wood heat and were told that their power won't come on until Friday. So my father went to Rutland to see if he could get some wiring and possibly a generator so that my husband can finish wiring the house with a back up system.

I doubt he would be able to get a generator. There's a lot of newer homeowners who moved in VT in the last year that no nothing about actually living here. That beautiful view may be "gorgeous" but with it comes a lot of snow, falling tree branches, and squirells who's brains are too small to distinguish between an electric pole and a acorn tree. Countless of times we had to call the power company to bring back power to our house, only to find that a squirell got zapped in the tranformer or a tree branch, being naturally pruned, fell on top of the line.

We used a lot of oil lamps when I grew up. The upside is that we didn't have to pay for the power that wasn't used. Possibly keeping electricity costs lower than it would be otherwise.