Almost a week after the Nor' Easter rocked New England, I am thankful.....

A few days back I posted a blog about the storm that ws just hitting New England.  Well 5 days later, the power is back on for us.

Well here is Prospect about 70% of the town has power again but the news is filled with towns that are still experiencing 100% outage!

In the 5 days without Power / Water / Heat I have seen and done a lot of things.

I have shoveled water into a garbage can to have it melt in order to get water to flush the toilets.

I have waited 30 minutes in line for Gas, and 30 minutes for a coffee.

I was almost hit by a startled deer that was obviously confused by the crazy weather.

I stopped my car to move debris so it would be easier to pass.

I drove through 6 towns trying to find 5 gallon gas cans.

I saw a pushing match break out at Lowes over a generator. The employees broke it up quickly, it could have been a lot worse.

I took my kids "for a quick ride". It was really a ride just to warm up a bit since it was only 38 degrees in the house.

I drove around from Starbucks, to Dunkin to Panera Bread trying to find a wifi connection so I could modify the status of one of my listings. (There is only so much you can do from the new 4S iPhone I just bought.) It was funny to look around the parking lot I finally ended up in and see a row of cars with laptops on their dash! Crazy!

I threw away an entire restaurants food supply. My family owns a Restaurant and we had to throw EVERYTHING away. It makes you sick to your stomach knowing people are going hungry and we have to through away 60 Gallons of ice cream, 100lbs of Hamburgers, 50 lbs of Hotdogs, etc etc. We literally filled a Dumpster.

I had to go to the car every four hours to charge my cell phone.

We listened to the radio in our home. I don’t think I have ever done that.

Some good things have come from this whole disaster.

I have seen more neighbors helping neighbors than I ever have in my life. I believe this has made us all a little more resourceful. My neighbor suggested I hook my gutters up to a pale so when the snow melts I have water to flush the toilets, WOW!

I have seen some people being more understanding and sympathetic. Today alone I saw someone let an elderly lady buying batteries and a blanket go in front of him in line.

Since all the traffic lights were out, courtesy was needed to take turns at intersections.

We were more together as a family this week. My family spent the night at my wife's sister's house since they had heat. My kids thought it was the greatest thing ever. it was their first slumber party. We blew up air mattresses and camped out in their basement. We even had a family dinner, made popcorn and watched a movie. it is something that would have never have happened if it wasn’t for this storm.

We spent a lot of "family time" together since there was no TV, computers, and school. We played board games by candle light and read books by lanterns. We had a snowball fight, made snowmen, and really just got back to basics. If it wasn’t for the extreme temperatures, it would have been manageable.

I know there have been more and more storm related deaths reported every day. As this goes on and on, people are becoming more desperate. There was a family that brought a gas grill inside for heat and families with generators in their basement because they were afraid they would be stolen. These tragedies could have all been prevented. I thank god my family made it through with just some "inconveniences" and I pray for the 500,000 people here in our state that are still in the dark and the cold. I hope the worst is behind us,and better days are ahead.