First post in a long long time

It's been a long time since I posted. Work has been busy, and oh yeah, we had that ice storm at the end of January. It was a once-in-a-lifetime happening. Our power went out at 7 p.m. on January 27. It came back on for about 12 hours on January 30, then was off again until midnite Friday night, when it finally came on again for good.
While we were without power, I was without a job, because I work from home with phone and internet and fax. So we fired up the old wood stove in the basement and sat huddled around the fire, while tree branches went "crack...BOOM!" for the first two days.
That first night was one to remember. The branches cracked and fell from the weight of the ice, almost constantly. I was worried that one would hit out roof and come crashing into the den or bedroom, as we have 3 pretty large trees within hitting distance of the backside of the house. Fortunately, only one branch pierced the roof with a fairly small hole, and we got it patched before the ice melted.
But the sound....OH, the SOUND! Every branch that hit the roof made such a whopping loud noise that I literally was out of my chair and ready to run every time it happened close to our house.
When the storm was over, I had a yard full of branches and more broken ones hanging from the trees that did not fall completely off. (in the vernacular of tree cutters, they call these hanging broken branches "hangers" or, more appropriately, "widow-makers.")
At any rate, I have spent the past month working the yard, trying to clean up as much of the mess of branches as I can before my yard man comes to start the really big work of trimming the trees and cutting up the big parts for my wood stove. I plan to get a nice mess of firewood for my patio downstairs, so that I have wood for the next time this happens, or at least for when it's really cold outside. We run the stove as an adjunct to our heat when the temperature stays below 30 degrees, it really helps to defray the heat cost.
I am including some pictures of the yard below, to give you a better understanding just what a big storm this was. Click on the pictures to get the really big version if you want more detail.
Here is how it looked when the ice was on everything.

Here's what my back yard looked like when it was over.


And here's the nice little deposit the sycamore tree left on my roof, including a hole all the way through the decking.

Here the backyard one month later. Note the nice little cache of firewood on the left of the top picture.



I still have to cut the usable firewood out of two stacks of branches, along with the rest of the branches on the ground. I estimate I have cut about 60% of the available wood in the back yard at this point.
I'm using a Black & Decker alligator lopper to cut the wood. This little honey will cut anything up to 4 inches in diameter. All of the big stuff I'm leaving for my yard man to cut up for me...at 59 years old (nearly 60 now), I don't have any business cutting up the big stuff.

Now, here is the Eerie similarity: My town had an identical ice storm 107 years ago to the day that this current storm occurred. It too devastated the town. They estimated the damages at $200,000 in 1902 dollars, which would be one big price tag for the cost of the storm. The writer of the book about the storm said that only 8 people had telephone service at the end of the storm. Frankly, AT&T failed us miserably during the current storm, as they had no backup generators on their towers and the only phone service in the entire town was Verizon cellular. I guess those commercials from Verizon that tout their network really are true! Anyway, here's a pic from the 1902 storm and you can click on it for the big version if you want to read the text below the pic.