Well that was a doozy. Everyone around the Seattle and Redmond area has a story about the big windstorm (does it have an official name yet?). We're still without power and it's looking like it won't be until Friday or Saturday before we can enjoy flicking the light switch and actually getting illumination. That will be seven or eight days on the occasional bit of generator power, an unfortunate record for me.

We call our house The Tree House because we're blessed to have found just a nice little house nestled up the hill into the woods in the Hollywood Hill neighborhood. That's all cool for just about every day of the year, except when the windstorm comes to town and plows into your hill.

Things I've learned:

• Doug Firs don't drop branches. They drop limbs. Huge limbs that I'm hardly able to drag, let alone pick up and throw into the forest.
• Sleepy eyes seeing a large neighboring Red Cedar sway back and forth and then do a belly flop into the ground can make your eyes snap open so fast it hurts.
• Torrential rain is not native to the Northwest.
• The sky is so full of stars... without the light pollution of Seattle and the Eastside, I practically fall over at night gazing at all the brilliant stars in the sky.
• If there's a severe weather alert, make sure that you're all gassed up (when I think of this, I hear Mr. T growling it at me, meaning that there's a "fool!" slapped on to the end).

We were very fortunate. Limbs dropped, trees fell down, trees snapped, but nothing hit The Tree House severely.

I hope as a result of this the region figures out how to avoid the power problems we set ourselves up for. Trees right next to powerlines, let along powerlines running through tree branches: bad idea. Cut cut cut!

I think we need to put some reflective stylings on our stoplights / stoplight posts, too. Last night I was delivering Elisa to a warm, powered place and I was driving on a local road (Avondale). If caution cones and stop sign placards had not been set out, there were at least one or two stoplights I would have blown through vs. treating it like a four-way stop, it was so dark and my headlights did nothing to call-out the stoplights. Combine that dumbness on my part with someone else at 90 degrees that is just as clueless and that's not a happy result.

So, anyway. The generator is going but one pellet stove is not enough to heat the house. Down comforters: best invention ever. No internet: phooey.