Progress!

Power stayed on overnight. We had a short blackout, 20-30 min, close to noon. And now I can hear the siren song of one dripping tap, as the pipe to our spare bathroom seems to have thawed a bit. The rest are still dry, but the attic has been checked and nothing seems to be busted so we are cautiously optimistic. The pipes are made of PEX, which expand at need, so less likely to burst.

Today’s bean recipe is White Bean & Tuna Salad. Meant to serve 4 but I expect that’s as a side.

https://www.food.com/recipe/white-bean-tuna-salad-102111

I mostly followed it, mashing the garlic to a paste with a bit of salt and the side of a knife so we wouldn’t get little garlic bombs while eating. Drained the beans, didn’t rinse for obvious reasons. Texas Sweet onion rather than green onions since that’s what we had. Added the olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Mixed it all up, tasted, decided it needed a fresh acid as the balsamic was tasty but it still felt a bit stodgy. Squeezed the half a lime from last night into it, and that perked it up. I think a lemon would work better, but ours was looking dodgy so I used the lime. Myrialux says the tuna made it all pull together.

Again, 3.5/5 under normal circumstances, 5/5 right now.

Yay

Power on all day today except for the 20-30 minute block of time around noon.

Water started coming back this afternoon! Slowly, and we have all the faucets on at a trickle now because the temps outside are still below freezing. If they were frozen, I guess the house being kept at 66F (the energy company is asking people not to go above 68) slowly warmed them enough to thaw? But we’re still not sure exactly what happened to deprive us of water, so even though there’s no boil water order in our area that we’ve heard of, we’re going to act as if there is and use the stored water for the next couple of days since we have plenty.

Dinner tonight: the last of the Lancashire butter pie leftovers, kept in the garage which is at a pretty damn low temperature, plus summer sausage and cherry tomatoes with a spice dip we make.

Pie: https://dejafood.uk/2019/01/20/lancashire-butter-pie/

It’s basically butter, butter pastry, potatoes, onions and butter, so really there’s very little that could go wrong. Myrialux says the pastry reminds him of buttermilk biscuits. The recipe says it’s good cold but I didn’t like it much that way. Reheats well.

The spice dip we make is a mixture of a chili lime salt, a little bit of chili powder, along with ground cumin and ground coriander. We don’t stick to too many measurements for it, just put it in and taste until it seems right. You cut cherry tomatoes in half and dip the cut sides into it. It sticks to the damp bits.

We played another scenario of Gloomhaven (yhlee: fuck oozes!!!) and tried a game called Canvas that Myrialux backed on Kickstarter. You are artists competing at art shows, and assemble artworks from transparent cards with elements printed on them, so the various elements form an art piece when stacked, and win ribbons based on various criteria you set up beforehand. It was entertaining.

D.Va was bouncy all day chittering at the birds on the feeder, and finally collapsed on the blanket I was using when we were prepping dinner. However Myrialux is now online in his office with several friends who also have power and internet, so I shall be stealing his blanket right after I post this.

My workplace had an HVAC thing bust in the attic, which drenched one end of the building, but it was mostly workspaces and only 10% of the collection in the building was affected, I hear, so that could have been much worse. Myrialux does not yet know if his building survived: several campus buildings have had floods from frozen pipes and the like, I hear.

All in all, it could be much worse. Tomorrow is forecast to hit 33F and Friday 41F so prepare for lots of snowmelt. I think we’ve survived the worst of it, fingers crossed.