Dear Folks, My evening's dining by candlelight gave a whole new meaning to the expression. But let me start from the beginning. This morning I woke up to the sound of the high winds roaring through the tree tops. In fact it was difficult to go back to sleep with all of the noise. I finally gave up trying and got up. When I went outside to pick up my newspaper and mail I also picked up my empty recycle box at the curb. I started carrying the box back to the house when a gust of wind caught the box and I felt that I had my hands on a sail and that both me and the box and the newspaper and the mail would go flying off with the wind. At that moment I knew how Dorothy and Toto felt in the Wizard of Oz and I knew that eventually I certainly wouldn't land in Kansas! Turning the box around I managed to fight my way to the side door and back into my house. All day the sound of the extremely high winds kept me a bit on edge but I managed to go through my regular daily routine until a few minutes after 5:00 p.m. when the lights started to flicker and then went out. They came on again and then off again and then on again and finally they went off again and stayed that way. After I realized that it was quite likely the electricity might be off for some period of time, I went through the familiar routine of lighing my kerosene lamp and digging up what few remaining candles I still have. Thank goodness there was still enough light in the sky so that I could make my way around the house. Note to Vee: PLEASE go out and buy some batteries for your flashlight! It was then that I realized that I was faced with fixing my dinner with no electicity. That meant not only no microwave but no coffee grinder for my afterdinner cup of coffee. My only hope was my old trusty gas stove. However, all of my dinner fixin's were still frozen solid and I wasn't experienced in thawing out my dinner in a conventional oven and then heating it up to the proper eating temperature. I knew what I had in my freezer and decided that my best bet would be my pork and sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. By lamp light and by candle light I managed to find the ingredients in my freezer but had to pause and figure out what to heat them up in. My dinnerware was certainly out of the question. But voila! I was able to find a proper Pyrex dish, turned the oven on to 350 degrees and winged it from there. In the meantime I put the tea kettle on for my cup of coffee. That's when I realized my electric coffee grinder just wasn't available to grind up my coffee beans. But no problem, I still had some ground coffee in my freezer and it was just a matter of figuring out how much coffee to put into the filter. (Note: when it was eventually time for me to pour milk into my freshly made cup of coffee and sit down to enjoy it, I didn't notice that the usual amount of milk didn't change the color of it in the least. When I took a sip of it, YEOWW, was it strong!! Even when I poured more and more milk into it and eventually drank it to the last drop, I may never sleep again!!) While all of this was going on it started to get chilly in the house (the furnace was off) and by that time it was dark outside. That meant that if the temperature outside kept dipping further into the 30s AND with snow forecasted, my only source of heat would be the wood burning side of my old trusty gas stove. However, that would mean that I would have to take candle in hand and make my way down the dangerous concrete steps into my cellar where I keep a supply of wood available in the event of such an emergency. Well, getting down the stairs with candle in hand seemed OK but to get the wood and get back up the stairs with candle in one hand and a bundle of wood in the other sounded suicidal. About 30 minutes after I had started to heat up my dinner, the pork and sauerkraut and mashed potatoes were hot enough to eat, I put the candle on my kitchen table, brought the Pyrex dish to the table and dined by candlelight. But somehow, it just wasn't the same as how I pictured dinner by candlelight should be! As I was scraping the last remnants out of the dish, I heard the glorious sound of the furnace kicking in and then all the lights in the house came on. My first thought was to give thanks to the Lord! Our blackout lasted less than 1-1/2 hours. I hope all of you were as fortunate as we were in this area in getting electricity restored again. Note: the wind is still howling!l vee