Yeah, it’s that crazy time of year.
I got up early today as we had a clean-out to do. I had previously thought I would wear a T-shirt today, but it was still rather chilly, so wore my regular long-sleeve shirt.
I was greatly regretting that choice after several trips lugging boxes to the van…
But looking at the forecast, I’m not going to pack up the electric blanket for the season yet.
Tomorrow … 81 during the day with afternoon thunderstorms and possible tornadoes in the area.
We agree … but our crazy is a different kind of crazy.
And back to working!
You got me…
Nah, we all know that this is just the brief window in between this…
and this…
Just like the difference between ice and sweltering hot humidity in your neck of the woods..
People out here are getting too comfortable and forgetting to prepare for…
Looks like my Psycho cat a little.
Here’s where my Texian kinfolk would delight in re-telling that hoary old joke about how & why The Sooner State keeps Tejas from falling sliding into the Gulf of Mexico…
As a resident of Altus OK, for a period of time, I can vouch for the accuracy of the joke. You know it is bad, when you leave the base for entertainment, and all there was to do was walk the aisles of Wal Mart.
Can’t drive anywhere to see mountains or trees, just flat nothing as far as the eye can see.
My friend who met his wife in Altus, she told me “Married him to get out of hell.” I thought she meant an abusive parent or something… Nope… Just Oklahoma.
While I don’t recall a single thing about my time living in Lawton, where we lived off-base during my saintly father’s first stateside US Army deployment after his second stint in the R.O.K.,* to Fort Sill - we’d been there for a bit less than six months when my saintly mother brought forth my youngest brother, 22¼ months after she’d granted me the same favor, and Dad was only stationed there for two years before we moved on to the Garden State’s Fort Dix - that still sounds like a good deal more action than our elders found there, judging from the tales of that time so many of them used to regale my siblings & I with later, when we were old enough to remember (all of the grandparents, one of the great-grand parents, various and sundry cousins, & assorted friends of the family visited, judging from the Brownie photographs & Kodak 35mm films taken during that time).
There was, however, a pizza parlor on the outskirts of Lawton back in those bygone days, on Cache Road (when it was still little more than a meandering track in all but short stretches) that did stick favorably in most all of their minds; in my 11th summer, as p/o a Summer Vacation cross-country driving excursion to a then-still young Disney World, Mom & Dad made sure to make a detour to that neck o’ woods - so that the youngest child could see his birthplace, and in hopes of gifting all of we young’un’s with the same pleasures found in the gustatory delights of that restaurant, so fabled in the family lore when we were young - but alas, it was no more (nor did the town then have anything resembling a big-box retailer like WalMart, as that type of thing was far in the future at that time).
That wasn’t the first time that my youngest brother had heard the joke - he’d long-since honed his wrasslin’ skills with our rowdy maternal & paternal cousins born in The Lone Star State, mainly on that sore score alone - but the pizza disappointment sparked the first time that he ever heard his own father tell it, just after we got south of the Red, on the way to next stop, Plano… 
The first had come several years e’er I was born, and before Dad had switched from the US Navy to the US Army, during the waning months of the Korean War, when he was running serving in the CIC of an Essex-class CV.
And we are on backup power (generator) for next 3 hours. Probably a test of shut down as tomorrow’s high winds may force power to be off for even a longer time. Two years ago there was a massive fire that was started by faulty / poorly maintained electric poles and transformers. So from now on … when the winds reach a certain level, the power company shuts down the areas impacted. Once an area is shut down, the process of bringing the system back up is slow.
After the 2017 hail storm, we got a portable 9000 watt generator and we created an easy hook up to the house main so it only takes us about 15 minutes to get back some power to work with.
I am not accusing you or anyone of doing this but I say it anyways.
NEVER MAKE A MALE/MALE cord to plug into a house!
NEVER Back-feed!
ALWAYS have a proper transfer switch with a PROPER Interlock to prevent back-feeding.
Yes they aren’t $20. Yes they are necessary. Yes they most tomes require an electrician.
What most people do not understand is that your little home generator can KILL A UTILITY WORKER. Your generator makes 120/240v and if not properly isolated from your utility feed, can backfeed to the transformer on the pole, and there it is stepped up to 13.8kv (13,800 VOLTS) or higher.
DO IT RIGHT!
OK, less doom and gloom, some breaker panels have interlock kits available. You can also get those little 8-12 circuit panels for a generator, those are safe. An ATS (Automatic Transfer Switch) is safest but requires a permanent generator. There are also these cool little things that plug in behind your meter.
Oh, and then there is CO.
Bottom line, BE SAFE!
We have a manual transfer switch which can only be switched if the main breaker is shut off. The transfer box the power cord from the generator goes into has to be switch from off to generator to allow the power to go through. And finally, the breaker that is fed from the generator transfer box has to be flipped on for the house to get generator power.
Yup, that is a proper Interlock! That’s keeping everyone safe
I have this installed on my furnace… Very cool. We have heat when we need to use the Generator, which is very rare but it’s very nice…
