Now we're (still) cooking with gas

This past Tuesday was my birthday, and one of my gifts was a subscription to the Washington Post. I'd asked for this specifically because my mom, who is a Post subscriber, keeps sending me links to articles she finds interesting, and I can never read them because the Post only allows non-subscribers to view one free article per month. And one of the first articles I was able to read with that new subscription was an op-ed from writer Tove Danovich entitled "I bought an induction stove. Then the power went out." 

You probably won't be able to read the piece if you're not a subscriber yourself, so I'll just sum it up briefly: Like many people, Danovich recently jumped on the bandwagon and swapped out her gas stove for an induction stove powered by electricity. And like most people who do this, she went on and on to her friends about how wonderful it was: so fast, so responsive, so easy to clean! Why would anyone ever choose gas? Then, as foreshadowed in the headline, she got an answer to that question when a storm knocked out her electricity—a problem she says she'd never once experienced before in her Portland, Oregon home. With no way to cook a meal or even brew a pot of coffee, she was driven out into the storm "in search of caffeine." 

Despite the headline, this story itself occupies only the first few paragraphs of the article. Danovich spends the rest of it explaining why, even after this incident, she's still absolutely convinced that ditching her old gas stove was the right thing to do. Gas stoves, she points out, emit pollutants that are dangerous to both our health and to the planet—though she's a little unclear on exactly why. (She seems to think the reason they've been linked to childhood asthma is that they "constantly leak methane," even when they're not running; in fact, the primary compound responsible is nitrogen dioxide, or NO2, which is produced only when the gas is burned.) She maintains that the reason most people continue to cling to their gas stoves is that they're snobs who don't want to give up their "high-end status symbols." For her, the fact that they don't work during a power outage is at most a minor inconvenience, not something that would ever deter any reasonable person from making the switch.

Unfortunately, I cannot dismiss this problem so easily. In fact, it's the main reason I haven't seriously considered replacing my own (not at all high-end) gas stove. 

I know that global warming is the single biggest threat currently facing humanity—perhaps even the biggest threat we've ever faced. I know that keeping the overall temperature rise below 1.5°C (2.7°F) is our best chance to avoid the deadliest impacts of climate change. And I know that we have no chance of meeting this goal unless we completely eliminate fossil fuel use—including my trusty gas stove—by 2050.

But I also know that no matter what we do, we can't avoid all the impacts of global warming. Many of them are already here, and even if we manage to meet the 1.5°C target, they won't go away. One of the effects we've already begun to see is more frequent and more powerful storms—the kind of storms that tend to result in power outages. Already, here in our New Jersey home, we experience power outages regularly—in extreme cases, several in a week. The one triggered by Superstorm Sandy lasted 24 hours at our house, and we got off easy; some of our neighbors were without power for days. 

One of the reason we made it through these disasters relatively unscathed was that our stove continued to work (except for the electric igniters, but we could easily light the burners with a match), so we didn't have to go hungry. Our battery-powered emergency gadgets can provide us with light, communication, even entertainment, but we don't have a backup for the stove. And with global warming increasing the odds that there will be more superstorms in our future, going without a backup seems more unwise than ever. (In fact, while so many of my fellow environmentalists are exulting about going all-electric and capping off the gas lines to their homes, getting fossil fuels out of their lives forever, I've actually gone the other way, adding a natural gas fireplace to our home specifically as an emergency heat source.)

This is why it frustrates me so much that environmentalists have chosen gas stoves, out of all the gas-burning appliances in a home, to fixate on. Even though cooking is responsible for only a tiny percentage of household natural gas use, they seem to think that they should attack stove use first because a stove is easier to replace than an entire heating system, and therefore it's an easier sell. But for me, the stove is much harder to replace than the heating system or anything else that runs on gas—and that's entirely due to the fear of power outages. My gas heating system, which is a much bigger offender than the stove, would be much costlier to replace, but much easier to get along without. It's useless in a power outage anyway because it relies on an electric heat pump to circulate the water, so I wouldn't be risking anything by replacing it with a more efficient electric heat pump. Replacing my gas dryer with an electric one would likewise pose no risk, since I can't do laundry anyway if the washer isn't working. The gas water heater would be a little harder to part with, since it allows me to enjoy a hot shower during a power outage, but that's a luxury I can manage without for a couple of days if I have to. But without my gas stove, no electricity means no hot water, no hot coffee, and no hot food. And if the power outage is due to a severe storm, I can't even leave the house to get these things.

There is one possible way out of this dilemma: find a backup system for cooking, similar to the gas fireplace that serves as a backup for heating. I've looked into this before, but most of the sources I found suggested either hauling out the charcoal grill or cooking with a solar oven—both options that won't work in the middle of a severe storm. However, after reading Danovich's piece, I decided it was worth digging into the topic a little bit more. And this time, I managed to track down an article on the self-sufficiency site Common Sense Home that offered a couple of ideas that were at least technically feasible. The first option, a flameless heater designed for use with MREs (meals ready to eat), wouldn't be ideal for us because we probably couldn't find any MREs that would fit our dietary needs. But the second, a camp stove that could be used with canned fuel (such as Sterno), seemed to have some merit. A quick search revealed that I could buy a folding stove for around $10 and a dozen cans of Sterno (good for 6 hours each) for around $40. Together, these would enable us to enjoy hot meals with neither gas nor electricity for a week or more.

Of course, even with this backup, we still wouldn't be able to go fully all-electric at home, since the gas fireplace would still have to stay. But since it's only there for an emergency backup, it wouldn't be used very often. Of course, if America actually does get its act sufficiently together to eliminate fossil fuel use entirely, we'd eventually lose our gas service and have to find an alternative, but I'm sure we'd have plenty of time to figure that out.

But even if swapping out our gas stove is a viable option, I remain unconvinced that it's crucial to do it immediately. Yes, there is definitely a link between NO2 from gas stoves and asthma. But we don't have asthma, and we don't have children at risk of developing it. And we do have a decent range hood, which (according to the experts at both Good Housekeeping and Wirecutter) can remove most of the dangerous fumes associated with cooking. 

I do want and intend to go all-electric at home eventually. But given that our gas boiler and water heater are responsible for the lion's share of our fossil fuel use—and that there's a much better technology available to replace them—I think those, not the much-maligned gas stove, should be our primary targets.

Money Crashers: Home Generator Buying Guide

Here's the companion piece to my article on whether to buy a power generator that came out last month. This one is for those who have made the decision to buy a generator and now need to figure out what kind to get. The article covers all the alternatives: portable versus standby generators, gasoline versus propane, sizes from mini to massive, and features such as electric start, low oil shutoff, CO detection, and inverter technology. It also provides tips on how to use a generator safely and maintain it so it will always be ready when you need it. Put this together with the first piece, and you've got a complete primer on home power generators and their alternatives.

Home Generator Buying Guide – How to Choose the Best for Your Needs

Money Crashers: 4 new articles

Several of my new articles for Money Crashers dropped yesterday and today, covering a variety of topics. First up is a piece on home power generators — specifically, on whether buying one to deal with disasters like the recent crisis in Texas is a good idea for you. I explored this idea myself during a series of rolling (and totally unpredictable) blackouts in 2014, and I concluded that the answer was no; we didn't have a reasonable place to set up a portable generator, nor to store it and the fuel for it, and a standby one would be far too expensive a solution for what was, for us, a fairly infrequent problem. This article walks you through the same process I went through to reach this conclusion, covering the pros and cons of owning a generator and the questions you should ask to determine if it's right for you. I also discuss several alternatives to consider for getting through a blackout, such as the gas heater we eventually ended up with. (And in case you decide a generator is the right choice for you, there's a companion article to this one due out soon on how to buy one.)

Should I Buy a Backup Standby Power Generator for My Home?

The next two articles deal with the cost of long-term care and how to deal with it. According to HHS, Americans over 65 have a 70% chance of needing long-term care at some point in their lives, and the costs can be astronomical — anywhere from $1,603 to $8,821 per month, based on a Genworth study from 2020. The first of the two articles focuses on ways to reduce this cost, such as relying on family members for care (which can take a toll on their mental health and yours), government aid programs, relocation, and long-term care insurance. (This, too, can be quite costly, so the article also explores ways to keep the premiums down as much as possible.) The second article approaches the topic from a more long-term perspective, discussing how you can plan ahead to deal with your costs, using products like insurance, annuities, or reverse mortgages. Between the two, they offer a complete primer on how to protect yourself from catastrophic costs.

How to Lower Long-Term Care Costs (Nursing Homes & Insurance)

Long-Term Care Options and How to Plan for the Costs

Finally, an article on a topic dear to my heart: podcasts. I'm a regular consumer of podcasts, listening to one every day in the shower. (In fact, I now have so many I listen to regularly that during the winter, when I don't always shower every day, I have trouble keeping up.) Many of my favorite podcasts are about economics, but I know many other people would rather learn about money on a more personal level: how they can use it to their best advantage for particular personal goals. The podcasts in this roundup can help. Whatever your goals — getting out of debt, earning more money, choosing investments, retiring early — there’s a podcast out there that can help you reach them, and this article can tell you where to find it. 

15 Best Financial Podcasts About Money, Business & Investing in 2021

Money Crashers: Save an Extra $1,000 in Just One Month

One of the presents I gave myself for my birthday was to cash in a bunch of the survey rewards that had been piling up in my accounts with MyPoints, Toluna, and Life Fun & Everything. I've been taking these surveys in my spare time for years, earning maybe 25 or 50 cents for each one I complete, which isn't much — but I've done a lot of them in that time, and I haven't made a point of cashing in the points regularly, so it had gotten to the point where I had over $1,000 in unused rewards just sitting there. So I traded in some of them for Starbucks and Barnes and Noble gift cards, as well as two Visa gift cards that I can use to pay for the new Critical Role book when it comes out this spring, plus another game from the store where we're buying it. Happy birthday to me!

The point of this is that even the little things you to to make more money, or to save more money, really can make a difference in the long term. And if you do enough of them at once, they can make a difference even in the short term.

That's the moral of my new article on Money Crashers, "8 Ideas to Make & Save an Extra $1,000 Fast (in Just One Month)." It's a lesson a lot of Americans could use, because according to a 2018 Bankrate survey, less than 40% of Americans actually have enough in savings to cover even a $1,000 unexpected expense. If the unexpected happens (as it tends to do), they have no choice but to borrow — and then they have to pay interest on that debt every month, making their budget even tighter and making saving even harder.

My article offers some suggestions on how to break this Catch-22. I suggest a variety of strategies —such as cutting unnecessary expenses, negotiating monthly bills, shopping rewards, side gigs, and loan refinancing — that people can combine to get themselves to that $1,000 goal in one month or less. It's not a huge financial cushion, but for many Americans, it could mean the difference between getting by and falling behind.

Money Crashers: What to Do If Your Wallet or Purse Is Lost or Stolen

When my purse was snatched last month, I knew right away I was going to be in for a huge hassle. Between dealing with the police, calling up my credit card issuers, going to the bank and the DMV, and changing the locks on the house and the car, I spent several days dealing with just the official aspects of the robbery—and I'm still not completely done replacing all the stuff that I lost. (After several failed attempts, I've finally found a suitable new purse, but I'm still in the process of reconstructing my grocery price book, and I have to either find a new date book or finally get myself a smartphone to serve the same purpose.)

As I went through the lengthy process of reporting and replacing everything I'd lost, it occurred to me that a summary of all the steps I had to take would probably be a useful guide for anyone else going through the same experience. And, as luck would have it, I happened to have a client that would pay me for such a write-up.

So here it is, my latest Money Crashers piece: What to Do If Your Wallet or Purse Is Lost or Stolen. It explains what you can expect when reporting a robbery to police; how to report and replace missing debit cards, credit cards, checks, safe deposit box keys, insurance cards, drivers' licenses, passports, and other miscellaneous cards; various steps you can take to protect your credit; how to track or block your stolen cell phone; have your house and your car re-keyed; and file an insurance claim if appropriate. I hope you'll never need this info, but if you ever do, it should be handy to have it all in one place.

Crisis = opportunity

I had a new experience this past week, though not one I could honestly recommend to anyone: I was the victim of a "strong-arm robbery." Or, as most of us would call it, a purse snatching.

I wasn't seriously injured (just a scrape on the hand), but I've had to spend much of the past week dealing with the effects of the robbery. I spent most of that first afternoon filing a police report and part of one other afternoon working with a sketch artist, and I devoted most of the following evening and day to bookkeeping matters. I went online that evening to cancel all my credit and debit cards and print out new copies of my insurance cards, and then Brian and I went out to pick up a new set of doorknobs, which he spent that evening installing, so the thieves couldn't get into our house. (The key was in my purse, and they could find the address on my driver's license.) We spent the next morning running around to the bank to replace my debit card and cancel the six checks I had left in my checkbook, to the car dealer to have our car keys changed, and to another bank branch to switch out the locks on our safe deposit box. And the day after that, we had to stop by my mom's house to get my birth certificate, which I'll need for ID to replace my driver's license now that I no longer have the license. Oh, and I also went to the library to get a new library card, because priorities.

After a few days of hard work, we've now dealt with all the official business except for my driver's license and registration (a trip to the DMV is on the agenda for tomorrow). Now comes the trickier part: replacing all my stuff. I'm the kind of gal who likes to be prepared for anything, so I habitually carry a lot of things in my purse besides the usual wallet, keys, and phone. I had a mini umbrella, a pair of sunglasses, a notebook and pen, a pillbox, a sewing kit, a first-aid kit, a book of matches, my grocery price book, a reusable shopping bag, a few crossword puzzles, a local map, a little makeup, a deck of cards, an energy bar, a travel toothbrush, a handkerchief, loyalty cards from half a dozen different stores, and wee containers of sunscreen, lotion, and hand sanitizer. Plus maybe a few other things I'm forgetting about. All that stuff, including the purse itself, has to be replaced.

But as John F. Kennedy once said (incorrectly, but that's beside the point), the Chinese word for crisis is a combination of "danger" and "opportunity." So I'm determined to turn this crisis into an opportunity for me: the chance to perfect my everyday carry, or EDC.

You see, as I was going through the list of all the stuff in my wallet, trying to remember what all I needed to replace, I noticed that there was a lot of junk in there that, really, I probably didn't need to be carrying on an everyday basis. (Side note: yes, of course I keep a list of all the stuff in my wallet for just such an occasion as this. I told you I was anal.) I'd need to replace the license, of course, and my credit cards and ATM card, and my health insurance cards. But did I really, for example, need my blood donor and organ donor cards? The blood bank already has all my info on record, and my new driver's license will list my organ donor status. And there were some store and restaurant loyalty cards for places we almost never go to, including one that has actually gone out of business entirely. And a card for a credit union that I never use, because the only branch is in New York, and it would cost me more to go into the city to close the account than the account actually contains. And a couple of shopping guides that I can easily access online once I finally get myself a smartphone, which I was planning to do this year anyway.

All that stuff doesn't need to be replaced, and the same, I realized, probably goes for much of the other stuff I was carrying around. So I've decided that, first of all, I'm only going to replace the stuff I truly need; and second, everything I do replace is going to be at least as good as the original, if not better. I'm not going to make do with a "good enough" purse or wallet or key ring because I've lost the one I liked; I'm going to take this opportunity to upgrade every single thing I carried in that purse that was less than ideal. So when all the dust from this robbery has finally settled, I'm actually going to be better off than I was before it happened.

I've already made a start. I've pared my new key ring down to the essentials: our new house and car keys, a mini flashlight, and a mini Leatherman tool to replace my little Swiss Army knife. Since I'd already found a pen that seemed pretty much ideal for me, I simply went back to JetPens and ordered a couple more of those (one for the new purse and one for a spare). I bought a new notebook, made from certified sustainable paper, at the local art supply store. (It was a bit pricey, but I just counted it toward my local shopping budget.) I ordered a wallet on eBay that's big enough to carry everything I need on a daily basis—cards, cash, and change—and can also hold my checkbook when I need it to, though I probably won't carry it around routinely anymore. (It came in handy once in a while, but usually, if I need to write a check, I know about it ahead of time.) And I found a purse on Poshmark that's similar to my old one, but with a single long strap so it can be worn across the body—a style that my doctor has told me is better for my back, and also has the advantage of being harder to snatch.

It'll take a while for all my new stuff to arrive, but within the next week or so, I should have an EDC that's better, leaner, more organized than what I had before this pesky robbery. Mind you, I still wouldn't say I'm glad it happened—but if I end up with a more functional EDC as a result, at least there's a silver lining.

Becoming an EDC woman

Last month, when I blogged about my new refillable roller-ball pen, I gave several reasons why I was so pleased with it. I liked the fact that it was comfortable to hold, laid down a neat line, and most importantly, was refillable. It uses a cartridge system, which is the easiest method of refilling, if not the most ecofrugal—and if I ever decide I'm willing to trade off some convenience for sustainability, I can switch it to a cartridge converter or ink-dropper system. So, ideally, now that I own these two refillable pens, I should never need to buy and throw away a disposable pen again.

However, there was one other thing that pleased me about these pens that I didn't mention at the time: adding this pen to my purse made a great upgrade to my everyday carry, or EDC.

What's EDC, you ask? Well, there are two answers to that question. Your everyday carry, or EDC, is simply the stuff that you carry around in your pockets on a day-to-day basis. This doesn't mean the detritus of gum wrappers and cash register receipts that accumulates over time; it means the items you carry deliberately, because you need them and feel lost without them. Your keys. Your wallet. Your smartphone, if you're like most people, or your little notebook and pen, if you're more like me.

But the phrase "EDC" means something more than that. It refers to a whole philosophy built around the idea of choosing your EDC as wisely as possible. People who belong to the "EDC community"—and yes, there definitely is one—put a lot of thought into what they carry in their pockets every day. They invest considerable time and energy into clearing junk out of their bags and pockets, paring down their EDC to a few basic essentials—and then making those essential items as useful and well-crafted as possible. Their goal is to have an EDC that can get them through any event they're likely to run into on a day-to-day basis, without weighing them down.

I first discovered the EDC community while shopping for my new pens. I went searching for reviews of refillable roller-ball pens, and I discovered that some of the most thorough ones were on the Everyday Carry website (yes, of course there's a website). Because naturally, if anyone's going to put a lot of thought into which pen is the best pen to keep in your pocket, it's going to be the EDC folks. These people pay attention to every aspect of a pen: functionality, comfort, build quality, size, and style. Some of them even write, in all seriousness, about how well a pen functions in "the harshest conditions," as if they were planning to take their pens on an Arctic expedition. (Who knows—maybe some of them are.)

People get involved with the EDC lifestyle for different reasons. To some, it's all about being prepared for emergencies. These are the ones who want their watches to have built-in compasses and their pens to stand up to "tactical" use. (The EDC movement isn't the same as the "prepper" movement, but there's definitely some overlap.) Others, by contrast, like the idea of being outfitted as a proper gentleman (since most EDC'ers are male) should be. These are the types who prefer fountain pens and pocket watches and always have a clean handkerchief.

I haven't seen any articles that specifically talk about EDC from an environmental perspective. Nonetheless, it seems to me that the EDC lifestyle is a perfect fit with ecofrugality, because it's all about choosing wisely and wasting nothing. You choose only the exact items you need to carry in your pockets, so you don't waste space; you choose the most efficient set of items, so you don't waste time; and you avoid wasting money and resources by choosing sturdy items that are built to last, not cheap ones that get replaced often.

So when I purchased my new pen, I privately labeled it as my new "EDC" pen—and mentally, I made a vow to start improving the rest of my EDC, as well. As a start, I went on eBay two weeks ago and tracked down a working copy of my old, much cherished Timex watch, which died after ten years of loyal service shortly after I'd invested in a new, solid stainless-steel band for it. It was the only watch I'd ever found that really met my short yet stringent list of requirements: a face with all twelve numbers visible; hour, minute, and second hands; a night light; a metal bracelet band (NOT an extension band that snags my hair all the time); and a design that works with any outfit, dressy or casual. So I decided that rather than searching site after site trying to find another watch that meets all those needs, I should just track down another copy of this old, discontinued watch and buy that. (And, as a bonus, if the band wears out, I already have a stainless-steel one to replace it.) So now I have the perfect EDC pen and the perfect EDC watch, and I'm still working on the ideal phone.

All this inspired me to write an article about the EDC lifestyle for Money Crashers. This piece explains the concept of EDC, outlines its benefits (e.g., saving time, saving money, and being prepared for any emergency), and then goes into details about how to craft your own personal EDC. I discuss the nine essentials that show up on most lists of the ideal EDC—wallet, key fob, cell phone, flashlight, pocketknife, multitool, watch, notebook, pen—with details about how to choose the best ones for your needs.

Here are the details: 9 Everyday Carry Items You Need to Have to Be Prepared for Anything

Emergency plan 2.0: Our new ventless gas heater

Last October, as you may recall, I was feeling pretty good about how well our household was prepared for emergencies. In addition to a stove that would function without electricity, a well-stocked pantry, and a supply of stored water, we had just acquired a battery-powered LED lantern, an emergency radio that could be powered via hand crank, and a jumbo box of chemical hand warmers. These supplies, I figured, would be enough to get us through two weeks or more of being stuck at home without power, summer or winter.

By February, however, I was no longer feeling so sanguine. At that point, we knew what a prolonged wintertime power outage was actually like, and it turned out that the chemical heat packs weren't actually much good for keeping warm. They can keep a specific part of you warm, assuming you have some way to secure the heat pack to the appropriate part, but they aren't much good at warming your whole body. We attempted to buy and install a little gas heater as a backup heat source, but it turned out that installing one of these was really a job for a professional. So we had to shelve that plan, and fortunately, we made it through the rest of the winter without incident.

I made up my mind, however, that it was going to be the last winter we would go through without some kind of emergency backup heating. So I started doing research into emergency gas heaters. I found that unvented gas heaters, like the one that we initially tried to install ourselves and ended up having to return, are by far the cheapest and easiest to install, but there's a bit of controversy about how safe they are. Carbon monoxide poisoning isn't a serious danger, as these heaters produce only a tiny amount of CO, and it shouldn't build up to dangerous levels as long as there's enough ventilation in the room. (This website from a distributor of heating appliances says that in most homes, just the natural "breathing" of the house through cracks and crevices should provide enough ventilation, but other sites, like this one, recommend opening a window to make sure.) Having the flame use up all the oxygen in the room isn't a problem, either, because all these heaters now come with an O2 sensor that automatically shuts them off if the oxygen level in the room drops below a certain point. However, sources like the Green Building Advisor still recommend against using them for three reasons:

1. "Even when working perfectly, they put a lot of water vapor into the house." Manufacturers counter this claim with a study showing that moisture buildup is typically a problem only when these heaters are used in northern climates and in confined spaces—and even then, the problem can be solved by choosing a heater that isn't too powerful for the space. I didn't think it would be a problem for us, since the heater would be installed in a big, open space and would only be used for emergencies anyway.
2. "Drafts, fans, candles, and tight houses can mess up the combustion process." Our 1970s house is neither especially tight nor especially drafty, so those concerns didn't seem to apply for us. We obviously wouldn't be using a fan during a power outage, and with our new battery-powered lantern as an alternative, we wouldn't be likely to use candles either. And if something did manage to go wrong somehow, there would be a CO detector just a few feet away.
3. "Many homeowners don't understand how to operate or maintain them." Since I always read the manual, I didn't expect this to be a problem in our case either.

So, having weighed the pros and cons, I decided that a ventless heater was probably the best choice for us and asked the contractors who came to give us quotes on our new boiler what they would charge to install one. We got a variety of reactions to the question: one contractor said, "We don't do those," citing the concerns I mentioned above, while another said, "Oh, those are great—I have a friend who uses his all winter long." The contractor we ended up going with said that if we hired him to do the boiler, he'd throw in the heater hookup for $100, so long as we provided the heater. However, due to a minor screw-up on my part (the heater I ordered from Amazon was a propane model, rather than the identical-looking natural gas version, and had to be returned), we didn't have the heater yet at the time the guys came to do the boiler. So they just put in a valve hookup for it and said to call them back when we got the actual heater.

So, after returning the propane heater, I ended up finding a reconditioned gas model on a site called Factory Buys Direct for only $80 ($105 including shipping). Of course, I'd also taken a $41 hit for returning the first one (ouch). But on the plus side, even with the extra $41, I still paid less altogether than I would have if I'd bought the correct Mr. Heater model from Amazon in the first place, and the one we ended up with is both more powerful and, in my opinion, nicer looking. Here it is, mounted to the wall in the room I've finally decided to start referring to as the rec room.

With the addition of this backup gas heater, our emergency plan is truly complete. We can now be snowed in for a week without power and still keep warm (in the rec room), cook meals (on the stove, with the food stored in the pantry), entertain ourselves (with books and games, a battery-powered radio that we can recharge with a hand crank, and an LED lantern as a light source in the evenings), make necessary phone calls (with our cell phone, which we can recharge via the radio), and even take showers (since the water and the water heater still work). We'll still have to do without e-mail, Internet, and TV, but it'll be more like a vacation in the country than a sojourn in the wilderness.

Of course, I'd rather not actually be snowed in for a week without power in the first place. But if we are, I'll be a lot happier being snowed in with this thing than without it.

The Backup Backup Plan

For much of the past week, I've been in what I believe is technically termed a "tizzy."

The cause of said tizzy was the weather forecast, which was growing increasingly dire as the week went on. By Tuesday morning, it was apparent that we were in for yet another big winter storm—the kind that would shut down pretty much everything for at least a full day. I had to assume that we'd be stuck at home all day on Thursday, if not Friday as well. And based on our experiences last month, I felt I had to assume that we'd spend all that time stuck at home without power.

Realistically, there wasn't that much I could do to prepare for this possibility, but I felt like I had to do something, so on Tuesday I ventured out into the cold and hit up all the local stores I could reach on foot, looking for supplies that might help get us through anywhere from a day to a week of being snowed in with no heat. At the grocery store, I stocked up on canned and instant soups, along with a jar of chocolate-hazelnut spread (a store-brand Nutella equivalent) to placate our sweet teeth. At the drugstore, I picked up a new 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle, since working on one was pretty much all that kept us sane during the the January 21 power outage. I also grabbed a couple of "pain relief heat wraps," which are basically just like the little chemical heat packs we already have for emergency use, only tucked inside a stretchy wrapper that you can use to hold them in place on your back or your hip. I'd found that the biggest problem with using the heat packs to keep warm was finding a way to keep them secure under your clothing; tucking them into a pocket doesn't put the heat where you need it, and slipping them into my shirt didn't work because they wouldn't stay put. So I figured we could use these heat wraps for warmth initially, and when they ran out of juice, we could just slip new heat packs into the belts.

Despite these preparations, however, I still felt jittery. I couldn't shake the feeling that we were about to be trapped in a cold, dark house for days, and while I didn't think we were in serious danger of freezing to death, I wasn't truly convinced that the heat packs would be enough to keep us from shivering miserably the whole time. On Wednesday morning, I was poking fretfully through the websites of the local Loweses and Home Depots, trying to see if any of them had any heaters in stock that would run on natural gas. And when I found exactly one in stock at exactly one store, Brian offered to go and pick it up on his way to work if it would keep me from worrying myself to death.

When he went to the store to get it, however, he ran into his first snag. His plan was to hook the heater up to the gas line that feeds our dryer, and he had been assuming that he would be able to use a 10- or 12-foot connecting hose, such as he had seen used with propane grills. However, this turned out not to be an option for a gas heater, so he had to content himself with a 4-foot hose, which wouldn't be long enough to get the heater out the door. So in order to warm ourselves with it, we'd have to camp out in the laundry room. But still, I figured, if things got really bad, we'd be glad to be able to warm up one room in the house, even if it wasn't the nicest room to hang out in. So Brian promised to take a look at the heater and the dryer connection that evening and make sure he'd know how to hook it up in case it was needed.

Snag number two became apparent when we opened the box and started reading the instructions. First, they started talking about various pieces of equipment you'd need to do the installation, none of which was mentioned on the outside of the box. Then we got to the part about the importance of testing the pressure in your gas lines before doing the hookup to make sure that it was no greater than "10.5 inches of water"—and we both realized that not only did we have no idea how to conduct such a test, we weren't even sure what that measurement meant. The further we read, the more apparent it became that Brian's idea of a quick-fix installation was not going to work out. And all the anxiety I'd been feeling earlier in the day now descended on him, as he contemplated the fact that he'd just spent around two hundred dollars on an emergency heater that was going to be useless in an actual emergency.

Fortunately, a check of the weather report confirmed that the much-anticipated snow wasn't expected to start falling until around midnight. So after dinner, back to the Lowe's we went and returned the lot. We did a little poking around the shelves to see if there might be anything else we could use as an emergency heat source, but since I wasn't willing to bring kerosene into the house, we had to rely on our backup backup plan to warm ourselves as best we could with heat packs. Based on sources I'd managed to dig up online, we also planned to confine ourselves as much as possible to one small room in order to conserve our body heat, and to hang up some clear plastic (which we dug out of our storage room) over the room's windows to help insulate them without blocking the light.

Fortunately, we haven't actually had to implement this plan yet. We're now about halfway through the predicted period of the winter storm, and so far, the power has remained steady as the snow has piled up to a depth of about 10 inches. (Well, actually, it's an additional ten inches on top of the six or so we had on the ground already, making a total of sixteen—and that's just in the flat areas. The piles of snow on either side of our driveway have nearly reached the level of my head.) But Accuweather is warning that another 3 to 6 inches of snow is on the way tonight, along with wind gusts up to 30 miles per hour, and that the combination "will likely bring down tree limbs and utility lines resulting in power outages." So I won't feel truly secure until I wake up tomorrow morning and (successfully) turn on the lights. On the plus side, if the power does go out in the middle of the night tonight, the roads should at least be clear enough by tomorrow morning to allow us to escape to someplace that does have heat, like Brian's office. (The cat can't go with us, of course, but hey, we can always leave her with one of those heat packs.)

Meanwhile, my next task is to scout around until I find a contractor who knows how to install one of those little gas heaters properly. Even if we never once have to use it, it should be well worth the cost just for its ability to prevent future panic attacks every time I hear the words "winter storm warning."

Can't trust the grid

As I sit right now at my desk typing this entry, I am perched tensely on the edge of my seat, constantly expecting the computer to shut down without warning.

You see, in the past two weeks, we have experienced eight power outages. I told you about the one we had over the weekend of the 11th and 12th, but that one actually wasn't too bad because the temperature was so unseasonably warm for January. In 21 hours without heat, the temperature in the house never ended up falling below 62 degrees. During the next two days after that, we had a couple of "planned" power outages as PSE&G worked to fix the parts that were damaged during the fire that caused the first outage. At least, they were planned from PSE&G's point of view; they still didn't give us a chance to plan for them by warning us when they were going to happen. Still, these occurred either late at night or overnight, so they weren't too disruptive; aside from being cut off in the middle of an episode of "Leverage" (our new favorite mind candy show) one night, we didn't suffer any real ill effects. It was an inconvenience, but we figured it was worth it to have the grid back on line and working reliably before the real cold weather hit this week.

Ha.

On Tuesday night, a major winter storm hit. Brian opted to stay home from work, which turned out to be a good idea, since most of his coworkers who went in reported that it took them several hours to get home—but while he was at his desk trying to work remotely on his laptop, boom, out went all the power again. This time the whole town wasn't affected—in fact, we could see lights on at the apartment complex down the street and at businesses less than a block away—but since the snowstorm made it pretty much impossible to go anywhere, we were just as surely cut off from civilization as if the grid had been knocked out for miles around. We ended up camped out in our kitchen, working on a jigsaw puzzle by the light of a flashlight suspended from the ceiling fan, dining on canned soup, and attempting to keep warm with chemical heat packs as the temperature gradually crept lower and lower. With the outside temperature at 20 degrees and falling, the house lost heat a lot faster than it had during the previous outage; in less than six hours, the temperature in the house fell to 60 degrees. Fortunately, we didn't have to find out just how cold the house would get overnight, since the power came back on at 10pm. We had just enough time to sneak in one episode of "Leverage" before bed.

The next day, the roads looked clear enough to allow Brian to venture in to work. We debated over who should take the cell phone; on the one hand, he would need it if he got stuck in the snow, but on the other hand, I would need it to call him if the power went out again. We ended up leaving it with me, which turned out to be the smart choice, because some time between 10 and 11 in the morning, out it went. Brian fetched me and took me back to work with him, and I completed Tuesday's blog entry on his laptop, then spent the rest of the day hanging out at his office doing crosswords and searching the Web for information about home generators (about which more later). Around 3pm we checked our phone and found it working, so we went home thinking we would finally be able to bake the pizza we'd planned for the night before. Yet no sooner had we walked in the door than wham, out went the power again. Once again, it was just our block that was affected, so we ended up eating at a diner and then hanging out at the Barnes & Noble until the power came back.

By this time, I was starting to feel really paranoid. The constant ons and offs of the grid were making me hesitate to do things that should have been routine. I found myself wondering whether I dared to take a shower, because if the power went out again in the middle of it I'd be left with wet hair in an unheated house. I ended up doing so, but hurrying to dry off and get dressed as fast as possible, expecting at any minute to be plunged into darkness and cold. My siege mentality persisted into Thursday as I hurried to get my last Thrift Week entry written early for fear that the power would fail again. Sure enough, it did, just before 3pm—too late for Brian to come and take me to work with him, so I just bundled up in my warmest clothes and read magazines until the lights came back on at 4pm. Brian was also thinking in the same terms; he came home early in a hurry to bake the pizza that had now been waiting for two days, and fortunately, we just managed to slip it into the window between 4pm and 6:10, when the power went out again. We headed off to Princeton for our dance practice having no idea whether we'd come home to a functioning house or a cold, dark cave.

We are now nearly three days into the siege. As of noon today, the electricity is still on—but I still find myself making constant adjustments to my life in anticipation of an imminent power failure. Operating in crisis mode, I've even found myself going against my usual ecofrugal instincts. I turned the heat up higher in the house (all the way to 70) to build up a reserve of heated air, so that when (I'm no longer even thinking if) the power goes out again, it'll take longer for the temperature to drop into the frigid zone. I also considered washing an extra-small load of laundry, rather than the usual more efficient large load, so that if the washer got be stopped halfway through its cycle, I'd be able to fit the wet clothes on our indoor drying rack. I'm even thinking about going to the store and picking up a box of tissues, which we haven't had in this house for years, because we're all out of clean handkerchiefs and I can't assume that it'll be possible to wash and dry them. (Because of course, all this had to happen at a time when Brian and I are both suffering from nasty colds, on top of everything else.)

All this has got me thinking seriously about the idea of going off the grid, an idea I've never done more than toy idly with in the past. The difference is that before, I always thought of solar panels and wood stoves as things you might install for the sake of living a greener, more sustainable life, and I always concluded that for us, it made more sense to stay on the grid and pay a little extra for power from renewable sources. But now, I'm actually thinking about going off the grid for a completely different reason: because the grid can't be trusted. A portable power generator, which costs only a few hundred dollars, isn't really a viable option; you can't operate one indoors (or inside any structure), yet any outdoor location you keep it in must be completely protected from the elements. Also, we'd need to buy and store fuel for it, either gasoline (which is messy, smelly, and hazardous) or propane (somewhat cleaner, but a lot harder to store in sufficient quantities). A standby generator looks like a more reasonable option, since it could run on our home's own natural gas supply, but we're now talking about a few thousand dollars rather than a few hundred, plus the cost of professional installation. Our biggest concern, though, isn't the money; we're just wondering what happens if we shell out a few grand for this thing and then, during the next big storm, the natural gas supply fails us as well. True, that's never actually happened in any home I've ever lived in, but at this point, we seriously feel like we can't rely on PSE&G for anything.

Our emergency plan

It's been nearly a year now since I blogged about the lessons we learned in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. Unlike many of our neighbors, we came out of the storm relatively unscathed; there was no flooding either inside our house or immediately outside, and we lost power for less than 46 hours. However, this was long enough to open our eyes to both the strengths and the weaknesses in our disaster preparedness plan. On the plus side, we had a gas stove that would work without electricity, a well-stocked pantry, and an ample supply of fresh water stored up in the basement—so feeding ourselves was no problem. On the down side, however, we discovered that even with plenty of candles and flashlights, we still had trouble lighting up any room enough to read or play games by. Also, while our house didn't get that cold with the furnace off in late October, I couldn't help suspecting that we wouldn't fare nearly as well if we suffered a prolonged power outage in, say, January. And although our landline phone continued to work reliably throughout the power outage, we worried about how we'd manage to stay in touch if a phone line did get taken down by a stray tree branch or something. (This turned out to be a well-founded concern when, several months later, our phone went out twice in the space of a week, which ultimately led to our dumping the landline in favor of VoIP.)

So, to address these concerns, we've added three new items to our storm-preparation kit:

1. A battery-powered LED lantern. This little guy was my Christmas present to Brian last year (appropriately enough, since he thinks it looks like a little plastic Santa Claus). With three D-cell batteries installed, it can run for 380 hours on its low power setting and 195 hours on its high setting, which is bright enough in our windowless downstairs bathroom to make reading quite comfortable. Even if we ran it for six straight hours a day, it could get us through more than a month without power on a single set of batteries—and if for some reason that's not enough, we have more batteries stowed in a drawer.

2. An emergency radio that can be recharged with either solar power or a hand crank. This was also a Christmas gift, one that I suggested to Brian's folks when they asked what he might like. In addition to regular AM and FM signals, it picks up seven emergency weather channels, and a jack on the rear allows it to be used as a cell phone charger as well. And should we need more illumination, it also includes a built-in LED flashlight—though it doesn't hold a candlepower to the light put out by the little red lantern.

3. A super-size box of chemical hand and body warmers. Of all the flaws in our disaster plan, the possibility of being left without heat in the middle of winter was the one that concerned me most. The lack of light might put us at risk for boredom, and the lack of a chargeable phone might leave us out of contact with friends and family, but the lack of heat was the one problem that could actually threaten our physical safety. Most of the backup heating systems I could think of, from wood stoves to generators, seemed far too costly considering that we might never actually have to use it, and most sites cautioned against using propane or kerosene heaters indoors. Some sites recommended crowding your whole family into the smallest room in the house with as many blankets as possible and relying on your body heat to keep warm—but that seemed to me like a pretty uncertain plan, and not much fun even if it worked. So when I came across this site that mentioned chemical hand and body warmers for keeping warm in a power outage, it seemed like the simplest solution. The box contains 40 packets, each of which is supposed to provide heat for up to 18 hours, so even if we each use one a day, we should have enough to get through a 20-day power outage without freezing our booties off. They should also keep for at least six years, so we won't have to worry about replacing them before 2019—and even if there isn't a single blizzard between now and then, the $36 we spent on the box will work out to only 6 bucks a year, which is cheap for a storm insurance policy. Moreover, we were able to stuff a couple of the packets into our car's emergency medical kit—so now we have a little extra protection to carry with us on the road as well.

So, for less than $100 all told, we now have a complete emergency kit, which should see us through a storm at any time of year in safety and at least reasonable comfort. (We've probably spent a couple of additional bucks on matches and spare batteries, but our emergency water supplies are simply tap water stored in empty soda and juice bottles, so they cost us essentially nothing.) And if we're never called upon to use any of it—well, $100 to keep storms away from our doorstep is cheap at twice the price.

Lessons from Sandy

Well, I guess that'll learn me not to try to outguess the weather service. SuperStorm Sandy, as they are now calling it, did in fact turn out to be a storm of unprecedented proportions, and we were very lucky here to escape the full brunt of it. We lost power for less than 48 hours: it went out on Monday evening, just as the Muppets on our DVD were singing, "It's time to play the music! It's time to light the lights!", and came back on Wednesday evening just after we were preparing to go visit a friend in a neighboring town who still had power. Everything else—our water, gas, and landline phone—continued to work normally. A lot of trees fell in our area, but none got anywhere near our house; the biggest thing to come down in our back yard was our neighbor's porch swing, which somehow managed to blow clean over the fence, and it didn't land on anything important. And while the wind did blow away one of our recycling bins and the lid from our trash can (even though it was tied down), we managed to retrieve them without incident.

So just how well did our preparations for the storm work out? Well, food-wise, we did pretty well. I was able to make my breakfast cocoa from powdered milk, and Brian toasted me some bread over the stove burner with tongs. Throughout the two-day period, he kept diving into the fridge to retrieve leftovers so we could eat them while they were still good, and he also transferred frozen items from the freezer to the fridge to keep it as cold in there as possible. The bit of ice cream we had in the freezer did melt after 24 hours, but it was still cold enough to eat (or, more accurately, drink). When the power came back on last night, nearly everything in the fridge was still cold. The only thing we actually had to discard was a pint of milk—and even that might have been okay, but we figured better safe than sorry. (In fact, we actually got some free food on account of the storm, because on Wednesday the café near Brian's office started giving away all its ice cream rather than let it melt.)

Keeping warm also wasn't too big a problem. With the power out, our heating system didn't work, but as it was only October, the temperature in the house never fell much below 60. We wore lots of layers and piled on the blankets at night. We also made a brief trip out to Brian's workplace on Tuesday (just long enough to check our work and personal e-mails, deal with the urgent ones, and reassure friends and family that we were okay). The building was on backup power, but the heat was running, so we were able to warm ourselves up for a few minutes. (We considered prolonging the trip by stopping at a bookstore or a Starbucks, but none was open, though there were a few businesses in the area that had power and were running as usual.) On Wednesday, we went in to his office for the whole day, and since I was dressed for an unheated house, I actually came close to being too warm. But I do worry a little about how we'd fare if we had to deal with a storm of similar magnitude in the wintertime. An unheated house is manageable when the outside temperature never drops below freezing, but on a January day when it never gets above freezing, I'm not sure just how cold it might get in here.

The biggest problem, as it turned out, was keeping ourselves occupied. It was too cold for a walk to be enjoyable, and since all the local businesses were closed, we couldn't exactly walk to anyplace and warm up once we got there. I thought we'd be in good shape with so many books and board games, but  the problem is that all these diversions require light. And in the wake of a hurricane, there isn't much of that even during the day. We could still read and play games with the curtains wide open, but once it got dark, we discovered that candles—even five or six of them at a time—just don't throw off that much illumination. We were able to play cribbage by candlelight, but reading aloud proved too difficult because either my body or the book itself kept blocking the light. So the one thing we'd probably find most useful for getting ourselves through future storms (and we can probably assume that there will be more of them in future) is a battery-powered lantern.

Throughout the storm, I kept thinking that we really shouldn't have anything to complain about. After all, a hundred years ago, most people lived like this all the time—no Internet, no TV, perhaps even no electric lights or refrigeration—and they managed just fine. But at some point it occurred to me that a hundred years ago, there was an infrastructure in place to support life without electricity. Houses either had forced-water heating or stoves and fireplaces to keep them warm; ice was delivered right to your home to keep your food cold; rooms had gas or oil lamps in them to read by. Sure, it's still possible in the modern world to build a life around these old-fashioned conveniences, but it takes a special effort and, in most cases, a lot of expense. For most of us, modern equivalents—like battery-powered flashlights and chemical hand warmers—make more sense as emergency backups. (Actually, ever since we saw an SUV parked in a driveway with the engine running and an extension cord hooked up to it—presumably connected to a pump in the basement—Brian has been toying with the idea of buying an inverter that could be hooked up to our car battery as an emergency generator.)

It's easy to romanticize the olden days, when people lived more simply. But it's also easy to remember that people back then didn't live as long, and in many cases, didn't live as fully. If I could choose to live in any time period in history, I honestly don't think I'd be willing to live in any time other than the present day, because I'd just be giving up too much. A hundred years ago, I wouldn't have the right to vote; seventy-five years ago, I wouldn't be able to fight off an infection with antibiotics; a mere twenty-five years ago, during my own lifetime, I wouldn't have access to the most massive library the world has ever seen, all at the touch of a button. And I'd much rather have to plan ahead to figure out how to do without such modern luxuries in an emergency than live without them every single day.

Battening down the hatches

So, for those who haven't heard, there's a hurricane headed our way. (Actually, I'm not sure how you could have managed to avoid hearing about it if you live anywhere east of the Mississippi that isn't under a rock. In the past week, we've received e-mails warning us about the upcoming storm from our local government, the power company, the phone company, the cable company, and my mom. :-)) So, being a list-maker by disposition, I naturally started running through all the possible ways in which the storm might affect us, and what we should do to prepare for each possibility. The list turned out to be pretty short:

• Possible event: Local flooding.
  Possible impacts: This would almost certainly not affect our house, which is high on a hill outside not only the 100-year but also the 500-year floodplain, and which has never had more than a trickle of water before. But it could easily flood out low-lying roads in our area.
  Necessary steps: In the morning, look outside and see if the roads are flooded. If they are, stay home. 
• Possible event: Tainted water supply.
  Possible impacts: Most likely, we'll still be able to shower, but we'll have to use our emergency water supplies for drinking and washing dishes.
  Necessary steps: Count the number of bottles of water we have stored up in the basement. Conclude that if we're without water for more than two weeks, we might actually have to buy some more. Get some cash.
• Possible event: Power outages.
  Possible impacts: Since it's only October and our heating system isn't even fired up yet, we won't freeze to death. If it gets a bit chilly in the house, we've got blankets and warm clothes. Our phone will still work, because it's a cord-connected relic from the 80s. The fridge and microwave won't work—but we've got plenty of canned goods, and we can light our stove with a match. Lights won't work—but we've got flashlights with extra batteries, matches, and plenty of candles. The TV won't work—but we've got board games and lots of books. My computer won't work—but if the outage is local and the roads are passable, then Brian and I can both go to his workplace to get some work done (if I borrow his laptop and transfer files from my backup disk).
  Necessary steps: In the morning, check to see if the lights go on. If not, make one quick foray in the fridge to retrieve essentials like the Brita pitcher and the peanut butter and then keep it firmly shut until the power is back on.
• Possible event: Disruption in Internet service.
  Possible impacts: I won't be able to work from home, since my work depends heavily on Internet research, but I can go to go to Brian's workplace as described above if the outage is local. If it's widespread, I'll have to take a day off work. And I'll be out of e-mail contact for a while, though we'll still have the phone for emergencies.
  Necessary steps: Make sure important e-mails are dealt with before bed.
• Possible event: Disruption in phone service.
  Possible impacts: We won't be able to get any calls from political candidates asking for money.
  Necessary steps: Keep fingers crossed.

All in all, this left us with a fairly short to-do list. In fact, pretty much the only items on it were normal jobs that we just needed to take care of promptly, such as covering up the air conditioner. Last year the plastic cover we put over it for the winter kept blowing off in heavy weather—even wrapping it around with duct tape, our sovereign remedy for most household problems, wouldn't keep it in place—and eventually blew away altogether. So this year we added a couple of little eye-hooks (just visible in the photo) screwed into the side of the house and tied it down to those. We'll see how that stands up to the gale-force winds they're promising us. We also swapped out the screens on our screen door for storm windows and put the padlock back on our shed door (since the latch won't hold it securely). Then we went out to run a few errands and saw the first concrete evidence of the approaching storm: lines at the supermarket extending way back into the aisles. Peeping into the baskets of our fellow shoppers, it looked more like they were just picking up the week's groceries a little early rather than preparing for the apocalypse, but the checkers were no less harried on that account. It looked like they'd actually run out of plastic bags—and when I wondered why they weren't pushing their reusable bags as an alternative, Brian speculated that they might actually be out of those too. Faced with a choice of paper or paper, I felt very thankful (and just the tiniest big smug) to have my own reusable bag ready to hand.

So, our hatches are now securely battened, whatever that means, and all that's left to do is sit back and watch how everything plays out. Frankly, I think the amount of hype we've seen just increases the likelihood that the Storm of the Century will instead turn out to be a Tempest in a Teapot—but luckily, we're prepared for the best as well as the worst.