A little over a week ago we got a notice in our building that on November 3rd, power was going to be cut out from 8:30 am to 8:30 pm. You read that right, a whole 12 hours. I had made arrangements at work that would allow me to stay home that day so that if it got too cold, I could bring the birds out and go somewhere with heating. I wasn't entirely too concerned since we've been having a mild November so far.
So Thursday morning the Boy got up and cranked the heating in the birdroom and the living room so that it could be as warm as possible before power got cut out. We also kept 3 sides of the cages covered so that the birds would still have some form of protection if it got cooler.
All went well until 8:30 pm came along...we still had no electricity. Sent the Boy downstairs to get a status update and he came back with bleak news - we probably wouldn't have power until around midnight. I got out extra blankets and proceeded to add a layer of protection to the cages, just in case. It's one thing to have the sun, although there wasn't much of it to be honest, help heat up the place during the day, it did get quite cool in the evening.
Being tired, I headed to bed early while the Boy stayed up until midnight..and indeed the power returned. But it was brief. I woke up around 3 am and everything was off again by then and based on how some items charged up during that brief time, we had electricity it seems for less than 2 hours.
Come Friday morning. The apartment felt a little chilly although it wasn't as bad as it could have been. We waited for the sun to rise and start heating up the apartment and let the birds out. We didn't need to wake them up - they were making plenty of noises while still covered so I guess they were fine. They did seem happier once they were able to be in the sunlight though.
Whatever the problems encountered by the ones doing work, it seemed to just get worse and worse - when trying to figure out what happened and why we still were without electricity, we were told that they had no idea when power would return. Joy. Later on, probably annoyed with tenants that kept coming to inquire about what was happening, building managers started broadcasting messages through the PA system - it's worth noting that we initially thought that on top of everything, we were going to be faced with a fire alarm as the sound used to turn the PA system on has up until today always been heard as a precursor to fire alarms..
The messages brought the news that the workers were hopeful that we would get power back by 6pm..and that was fairly accurate, although it was closer to 6:30pm.
I don't think I ever have been so happy to hear beeps of things turning on and getting light when flipping a switch!
I also took this occasion, since it was easy to get pretty bored, to make some foot toys. Lots and lots of foot toys. There are 130 toys in these pictures. If we consider that each could be sold at $1.50 each, I saved $195 - which is more than what I paid for my last HUGE shipment of beads! And estimating that each toy has 5 beads (a very small number had other pieces of wood), I strung up 650 beads over two days! Actually it's a little more than that since Léa stole a few strings while I was working on them with her next to me..
I also took a few pictures of the birds this morning and might post some later.
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