The Dark Story of This Week's Column

Power failures always come at an inconvenient time. Think about it: when would it be convenient, for the lights to go out, the furnace to stop working, and your computer monitor to go black?

Okay: maybe you're one of those folks whose livelihood doesn't depend on whether or not the network and your computer are on speaking terms.

Speaking of which: hats off to Stan Parks, who came out to work on our Vacnet servers this evening. They were a bit temperamental, after the power outage.

There are all sorts of winter storms. Some are howling blizzards. Others involve serene descents of lovely drifting snowflakes whose accumulated weight collapses the roof.

Today's storm specialized in ice. Lots of ice. Layers of ice. Sheets of ice.

Ice on power lines. And cars.

When I let him in, Stan Parks told me that my car, had about a quarter-inch of ice on it. I'm seriously considering staying here in the office overnight.

By now, you may be wondering why there's so much "me" and "I" in this column. Aren't I supposed to be writing about something or someone in Loonfoot Falls? You're quite right: and I had a perfectly nice column written, when the lights went out.

Stan tells me it may still be somewhere in the digital depths of the network's memory. He may even be able to get it out, eventually.

But deadlines are deadlines. So this week's column will be an explanation of why there's no column this week.