Sunday, December 27, 2020

In Which We Sort of Travel and Other Stuff...

 Well, Christmas this year was certainly in keeping with the rest of 2020.....

Long story short, we had a rain and wind storm on Christmas Eve. A really, really nasty rain and wind storm. And, like in August with Hurricane Isaias, the power got knocked out. After it became very obvious on Christmas Day that we were NOT getting it back any time soon, my person made the decision that we were going to a hotel until it came back on. We spent four days powerless after Isaias and I really don't think any of us could deal.








Not a bad deal, though. The room was clean, and cute and, most importantly had amenities such as electricity and running water. Which may not sound like amenities, but in this case, they totally were.


















I mean, really, we've had worse ideas. And it wasn't expensive and it was for the one night. 

We got a text about nine-forty the next morning (26th) saying the power was back, but we'd gotten texts like that twice before that had turned out to be not quite the case. So we called the house to see if the answering machine (ansaphone, as Crowley calls it) picked up. It doesn't work with the power out. When it picked up, we knew all was good. 




And speaking of Isaias....

This is one small part of why power was out as long as it was:












This tree was part of the stone wall between my person's house and the neighbor's. As you can see, it didn't get uprooted. It broke in half. Holy CRAP was that ever loud when it came down. By then the power had been out for a good couple of hours as it was.




Which was a good thing, because there went the lines











See those lines in the background? They're not supposed to be down there. 










This one uprooted. It's in the yard next door.














That tree on the left is the one my person thought was down when she got to the end of our street. She had to sit there about ten minutes because they were still chainsawing the one that fell. She said later that she was sure it was going be like Christmas in August - a tree in the house. It was an absolute mess, but we did end up standing outside a couple of days later at two in the morning watching a truck put lines up. That was cool. Unfortunately, the freezer wasn't cool anymore by that time. Everything thawed. 

2020, man......











Even the (actual) Christmas tree fought back this year. I think the idea was that Crowley would hand the lights to Jade, who would hand them to Aziraphale. 

That's - not what happened. 



















Meanwhile, Celine was trying to talk Emmie into something fancy. 





















Celine can be a bit - chaotic, shall we say. There was the time she decided to talk to some very drunken and/or high guy in her true form. Given that her true form is something like a bazillion wings and eyes all at once....

Aziraphale says she gets it from her mom. I don't know. He can be "Just Enough of a Bastard" sometimes....

















Opal and Lily. Opal is Jade's younger sister. 




















Jade is a model, BTW, and has done a number of photoshoots. 























You can see why.....




















This is Benjamin. He's one of Maddy's friends. 
And a quick bonus shot of Aziraphale, Crowley and Opal.