Rocking New Penny!

I was jolted out of bed early this morning (sometime around 5 am). I just thought I had a nightmare or something but it was actually a 3.7 earthquake.

At school we did a lot of experiments, we put a peep in a vacuum (less pressure) and the thing got huge. We poured out a gas (CO2). My favorite experiment was using a dropper.

First we had to fill a test tube to the tippy top and then add drops of water. How many drops do you think we were able to get on the top? Next we took an old and new penny (tail side) and added drops until they spilled over. How many drops do you think we added?

Answers will be posted after in comments.

Shelter in Place

Our snowfall and power loss was a significant event. So I plan to be blogging about it for some time. When the power first went out, the goal was to keep the house warm. Little Kat got the duct tape, and taped around the doors to close the gaps. Who knew when the power and heat would come back on.

We had previously purchased a propane cooker. It is a portable small thing. But we wanted some hot food while the power was off. I bought some propane in a bottle as well. After reading the directions, we found out you could not use this cooker indoors. Drat. We already closed off all the doors. And I did not want to open the doors and make the house colder.

There was hot water left in our heater. Everybody took a 5 minute shower shortly after the power went out. That felt good. The water heater is powered by gas. However I was not sure whether it needed electricity as well to run. Most of our phones need power to run. But we kept one of the old ones that works off the power that comes in on the phone line. That became our new incoming phone line.

We decided to do most of our work during the daylight. Had to conserve battery and flashlight power for the dark. There was not that much work to do during the day. We got a full game of Monopoly in before the sun set. Next time I will talk about the massive snow levels we got.

Power Outage

I woke up very early this morning. My cat senses told me something was wrong. Then I saw the problem. The alarm clock was off. I flipped the light switch. Yep. We had a power outage. Luckily the hot water is done by gas and not electric. The gas was still working.

So I called the electric company. A message said the outage was already reported. However it would be a few hours before it would be restored. I decided to go in early to work. The local McDonald's had power. I figured a Sausage McMuffin was in order.

When I got home, the power had been restored. The house was cool. So the power was not out long enough for the house to heat up too bad. The only regret I have is that the answering machine seems to have burned out. We just replaced this darn machine recently too.

Power Failure

This morning I awoke and knew something was wrong. There were no numbers displayed on my digital clock. It took a while in my dazed state to realize that the power had gone off in the house.

I did my best to get ready in the dark. At least there was still some hot water available. I called up the power company. They said somebody already called in the problem. As I opened the front door, I saw the utility guy working in the street.

Still I was not sure when we would get power back. The electric company said it might be a couple hours. To me that meant they did not know how long it would take to fix. I was glad to see our lights on when Little Kat and I returned home in the afternoon.