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Note: This post was originally hand-written on January 14, 2007 and is being typed on January 30, 2007.

After spending the better part of the day over at a friend’s apartment with power, we’ve retired back to the dark, and admittedly chillier, confines of our own place. Once again I come to you from the candlelit makeshift desk I’ve created on my bed. I’m using a fairly big picture as a flat surface upon which I’ve created a desk that looks like this:

[The hand-written post contains a picture of my "desk"]

When we woke up this morning we decided it would be a good idea to let the crew at Burger King make our breakfast. A lot of other people had the same idea. The McDonald’s on the way to BK had a line that backed out into the street and the normally unbusy IHOP parking lot was spilling over into the adjacent hotel parking lot. And speaking of hotels, we also discovered that every hotel and motel in the Springfield metro area that had power was booked completely.

On our way home we decided to take the extra-long route home to get a better look at the rest of the city. What we had seen in the dark last night was nothing. The radio said that the Governor of Missouri declared a state of emergency and the National Guard was coming to help our fair city.

And boy did it look like we could use the help!

I would honestly guess that almost 80% of the trees in Springfield have broken in some way. Huge trees that were probably 70+ years old were split in two from the weight of all the ice. And branches were strewn up and down the streets making passage impossible. It looked like a tornado had come through the entire town.

Cars and houses were buried under trees and ice while power lines laid across many a street. Reports on the radio listed businesses that were out of gas and kerosene and others that had generators coming in. They also detailed which types of situations warranted calls to 911 as, apparently, people were jamming the emergency lines with calls that were better handled by the utility company.

Water in the city is being pumped by backup generators so the city was also asking people to conserve that water as much as possible to avoid a complete outage. And the number of residents in the city without power was still pushing 70,000. I don’t even want to know what the number of powerless was including all of the small towns around Springfield (which were all said to have 100% outages).

Needless to say, the situation was a lot worse than I originally thought.

That’s why we were so happy when our friend from work called (who had just come back into town) and said she had power. We rushed to throw some things into the car to make the drive across town so we could take advantage of her electricity before it went out, too. She even still had Internet access, ta’ boot (hence my brief update post earlier in the day).

It was a little strange on that side of town. The ice looked much worse. And we even drove over some downed power lines and passed a power pole that was broken and leaning over a house. But despite all of that, it looked like the majority of that part of town still had power. As I think about it now, though, I actually think the main utility headquarters are out that way - so that might have something to do with it.

We spent most of the day over there - taking showers, eating hot food, checking email and blogs, and watching TV. It was really nice! And it continued ice the whole time we were there. The view from her balcony reminded us a lot of Narnia. Everything was covered in a thick layer of ice and it all looked glassy and fragile.

We sat on the balcony several times and we could hear trees crackling and breaking and crashing to the ground off in the distance. We even saw several trees close to her apartment break. It was extremely surreal and more than a little scary.

But our big scare came in the form of an exploding transformer on the next street over. The flash was so bright, and there were so many sparks, that all of the lights with photosensors went off for several minutes, thinking it was day light. To our pleasant surprise, however, her power was still on.

And the end of the day we decided not to sleep at her apartment tonight. She lives alone in a one bedroom place and we felt like we’d be in the way. She did, however, give us a key so that we could come back over in the morning (assuming her power is still on then). That was very, very nice of her and we appreciate it a lot. Thanks, friend! I’m going to bed tonight with both sets of fingers crossed - one for our own power and one for hers.

As of this moment I won’t be working tomorrow. The office is currently running on generator power and only essential staff are going to work in the morning. “Blog writer” probably doesn’t fall into the realm of essential. But I’m going to call at noon and see if power is back on. I’d actually love to go to work right now. Anything would be better than this feeling of cabin fever and boredom.

I just heard another snap outside and upon a trip outside I discovered that the big oak tree that marks the sign of our apartment complex has shed half of its branches. It’s sad. When the ice melts this town is still going to be in a shambles. And even though I’ve never been a huge fan of Springfield, it could never been said that this was ugly town.

Oh well. This is what folks get for living above the Mason Dixon line. As for me… I’m ready for 70 degree Texas winters again. ‘Cause this ice storm bullshit is for the birds.

With those words of hope I bid you farewell. Goodnight… and enjoy your evening.