well, we got a nice Valentine's Day gift: a major ice-storm... in fact the worse
one I've experienced since moving to Tinton Falls in 1992.

The blocks around our home were like a war-zone ... most streets blocked
off, lines and tree branches down all over.

I had Verizon FIOS (fiber optic service) installed Tuesday. Wednesday,

the line came down by a branch and a turkey driving by pulled the fallen cable down the street.
We lost power and I thought we'd get by without too much trouble
since the power lines to our home were still up (though the neighborhood had

no power) but an hour later the power line from the pole to our home was pulled down

by another huge branch.

The neighborhood sounded louder than the fourth of July... just stand
outside and you can hear gunfire/cannon-fire going off as aching tree
branches give way to the weight of ice.

So, no phone, no power, no idea when it'll be back. My son, with bronchitis for 3 days,

vacated the house to some friends and stayed there for a couple of days.

Nannette and I went to Borders so I could get online, and we could recharge our cellphones.
Our home was 57F when we left, and outside it was on its way down to 14 F Wed night.

I called a home depot in Hazlet and they had a generator in stock, so I reserved it.

After an hour, Borders lost power. That prompted us (by this time my eldest daughter joined us,

her condo in Shrewsbury was also without power, she would stay with us for 2 nights) to go

get the generator as it was apparent we were going to spend a cold / dark night.

After Borders went dark, we went up north to get the generator. The generator

in Home Depot was bigger than what I wanted and
more $$. On the way, we went by Costco
which was open and I remembered they had generators.

So I picked up a $250 3850 watt
unit; perfect for what I needed.. to run a 20amp circuit for
the furnace, a few lights and a radio

Thankfully the JCP&L crew came Thurs morning to restore the wire from the pole
to my home, but the entire square mile of that part of Tinton Falls and Shrewsbury without power.

It was dangerous to go out Wednesday because of the downed wires and falling branches.

I had to stay home to see if anything broke through our roof. Thankfully no big branches landed on the house, and we moved the cars around
to keep them out of harms way as well. My daughter helped a neighbor move a car in their neighborhood as well.

Both the neighbors car and my daughters would have been severely damaged had they not been moved!

I had installed a circuit for Y2K that runs to my furnace, using a manual switch,

but I got rid of the generator I had back then. For the new generator, I had to change

the plug to match the generators 220 v output (a special 20AMP interlocking plug that I just happened to have

downstairs ... whew... I had purchased it accidentally when I put the Y2K circuit in, it didn't match my old generator,

and thankfully I never returned it to the store... came in handy this time for sure!) then we were in business.

Heat came up a bit before the gen ran out of gas somewhere around 3 AM (I knew
I was low on gas but I was just too cold and tired Wed night to get more after working on the plug transfer), so
Thu morning I had to run out for more gas. Temp in the house was down to 48F. When the gen was up and running,

and I was ready to leave for work, JCP&L came to reinstall the power cables and I had to wait for them to finish

because there were some other miscelaneous wires I needed removed. They were old comcast

cables I never used and were still hanging all over the street and trees.

When JCP&L was done, I refilled the gas in the generator and came to work. The termperature in the house was

a balmy 55F and rising when I left, eventually getting up to normal temp later in the day.

Power was restored when we returned from the store last night about 8:35PM. Verizon came

and restored the phone/FIOS service by about 10:30PM.

I give these outside line workers all the credit in the world working in those temps!

The real tragedy is that the town came through this past summer looking at trees and

WOULD NOT remove branches that I requested them to remove, though they were trimming

branches directly over the street. So I blame our town, not JCP&L / Verizon, for the inconvenience.