The best intentions often go awry, and our intentions sure got sidetracked today. The power went off in the very early morning hours - like 4:45 a.m. - and that meant no water at our house except what was in the tanks. We know what it's like to have this happen. We have power outages all the time. However, today was Town Meeting Day and we'd intended to go, listen in on the discussions, vote, see friends, etc., etc., so we went about our usual morning routine as best we could, thinking the power would be on in plenty of time for us to take showers and get ready to go to the meeting. However, we didn't get power until something like 1 o'clock. I'd given up on going anywhere long before that, and settled down to doing things that didn't require a computer.

For lots of folks, that wouldn't be hard to do, but I happen to be in the middle of putting the Joe's Pond newsletter together as well as a heap of historical society stuff, so it took me a while to acclimate to the situation.

I heated some left-over coffee on the wood stove and settled down with some files that needed sorting. Fred had been in the middle of a couple projects on his computer, too, so he joined me in the living room where we sat with bright sunshine streaming in the big windows, cozy by the fire, and began to enjoy the quiet peacefulness of the morning. No refrigerator humming, no noise from the oil burner beneath us - it was like 20 years ago, before either of us was retired. I'd forgotten, but we both enjoyed our morning once we got the hang of it.

We had several calls from neighbors asking if we knew anything about when the power would be back on. Fred had talked with Washington Electric a couple of times early in the morning and all we really knew was there was a problem with some kind of feed from Green Mountain Power, but no knowledge of when power would be back on.

We were concerned about one of our neighbors who is 94, but she told us she was also enjoying the quiet and was heating her lunch on a small sterno stove - like Fred said, she's a regular girl scout. Most folks who live in Vermont's rural areas like we do learn quickly to expect power outages and be prepared. It's good to have one once in a while to keep us all up to speed with extra food, water and some auxiliary heat available, just in case.

So we never got to town meeting, but we went to Cabot this afternoon and picked up Ice-Out tickets. The general store was out, but Harry's Hardware had plenty. Now everyone has enough to probably last until the close of the contest, although the rush will be on during the very last week.