Erik @edebill@wandering.shop

3 day weekend has begun. Goals for the weekend: get replacement seeds sown, plant up sweet pea and strawberry seedlings, read a book or two, and chill chill chill. Have not yet fully recovered from last week, and next week I’m on call, so this is the time.

I've been using Safari on my work computer for a while, and I'm really coming to love the way it replaces the bookmarks bar with a bookmarks sidebar with a handy open/close button. All my screens are much wider than tall, so saving vertical space is much more important than saving horizontal (same reason I put the dock on the side)

TFW your rails micro service has a p50 of 7ms, and p95 of 16ms. Ruby and rails have come a long way from the slow old days.

Several thing (daffs, hyacinth, garlic) frozen down to about 4” off the ground. I think the snow insulated from the worst temps. Artichokes, Swiss chard, broccoli, Dutch iris, mistflower, snowdrops, spiderwort, bear’s breaches, and oregano basically turned to sludge or crisp. Sweet olive, mahonia, and bay tree alive but showing leaf damage. Rosemary looks frozen back, but not entirely dead. Some sweet peas frozen, others fine. Not sure about sweet potato vine.

Water is up to enough pressure for a (very low flow) shower. Not sure about the hot water yet. In any case the bathtub is full of very dirty snow that'll need to be scooped out and returned to the outdoors as I don't want to waste the water to melt it in place. Almost out of the woods, and if the hot water is OK the only losses will be the food in the fridge and a whole bunch of plants.

The water has come back on a tiny trickle. We were hoping for tomorrow afternoon at best.

Our local Chinese place (.5 mi away Beijing Wok) opened for take out! I am stuffed full of potstickers and General Tso’s. After a week of unsatisfying meals based on whatever we had that didn’t need to be in the fridge it was amazing.

The day dawns cold and clear, but is expected to warm up to 50. Still no water, but we captured a lot of meltwater yesterday and they say there’s a good chance everyone in Austin gets water back over the weekend. I anticipate today will be a day for assessing what made it through and what didn’t.

Power seems to be solidly back. Gas seems stable. Water still out, but it seems like it’s just Austin Water grinding through a giant pile of broken pipes until we have it. In the meantime we have enough melted snow for flushing and bottled water for at least 3 more days. Honestly the worst part right now is dish washing. We’re mortally afraid of making dirty dishes. Cancer kitty doesn’t seem to be hurting, and the vet hopes to be open Saturday for more meds.

We still have power (and can use the gas heater). We do not have running water. Burst water lines all over basically draining the water system. I’m guessing the prolonged record cold froze the ground just enough. We’ve never in history had two single digit lows in a row, and we’re about to hit the record for consecutive hours below freezing (140, or about 6 days). Thankfully Val has a bottled water stockpile from pre-covid protests and voter registration events.

Power came back just after midnight. Hot water heater unfroze. Made coffee for the first time since Sunday. Still have to sort out the food in the fridge, the seedlings that might have frozen in the garage, and lots of other things, but it seems like this whole disaster might be over for us? Or at least entering a recovery/clean up phase? 1/3 of town still lacks power, so we’re definitely lucky.

The garage has been sitting right around freezing. I suspect that means I have to sow all my tomatoes and peppers and such over again, save for that one big tray of marigolds. If I had thought ahead I might have moved the tenderest seedlings into the main house where we have more insulation.

Heading into another night with no power, but it is over 10F warmer outside, so hopefully the house won’t get so cold over night. The last two mornings it was 50F when I woke up. We got up to a balmy 56F during the late afternoon. The water heater just kicked into life and made a lot of noise, but still no hot water 😞

Going into day two without power. We still have water and gas, but the hot water stopped over night. Hoping that doesn’t turn into a burst pipe later on. Yesterday the city said they thought power would come back on this afternoon.

FUCK I put it in my office and closed the door. It got out and Fox caught it. It is still alive and I have towels stuffed under the door to stop another escape.

This little guy couldn’t fly. Not sure if it was just the cold/exhaustion or a window strike. Our power is out but it is still a lot warmer inside. I don’t have any bird cages any more, but the cat carrier will at least keep the cats out.

I absolutely shoveled snow to clear a path to the bird feeders and a landing place for birds to feed on the ground.

Austin energy says the power outage may continue until tomorrow afternoon.