I arose at 5AM today in order to get on the road by 7AM to drive to my Pharmacy in Lockhart. It was cold! I believe it was around 20 degrees F when I left this morning. Thank God it was not raining and turning to ice. I think that will come tomorrow. Anyway, I made it to work and rushed in just before 8AM, just in time to open and have the power go off. It seems that rolling power outages were planned for Texas today. Big Cities may have been spared but little cities like Lockhart were not. The power was not to be off more than 2 hours. Thank You Smart Grid Electrical Technology! By the way, some small cities like Luling, Texas had some real problems due to the power being turned off. When they turned the electricity off in Luling, it did not come back on. It was turned off at 11AM and as of 4PM it was still not on. Think about all those cold Texans who are not used to temperatures under 70 degrees F. Well, the power outage caught us in the middle of morning rush. So, patients who were sick had to wait till the power came back on. Shoppers in the rest of the store had to stop shopping until the emergency lights came on and then they were only allowed to purchase non cold items.
Let me stop at this point and say something....STOCK UP FOR EMERGENCIES! If there is one thing that the Government has not lied about is the fact that people need to be ready for this type of emergency. Have food and water and drugs and alcohol at your home. Have enough to last for at least 3 months. The most important item on that emergency list, according to ALL OF MY EMPLOYEES IS ALCOHOL. If something like a power outage occurs, immediately open a bottle of booze and start drinking. Wow! I work with lots of women, so I guess I know what rural women will be doing during the next major catastrophe....getting hammered and whatever else goes along with getting hammered.
Anyway, eventually our power was restored, after the emergency generator kicked on, after several minutes. Eventually, the real power came back on. Now, today showed me just how things will be when the next big catastrophe happens. Every parent who worked for me was about to walk out because the school was about to cut their kids loose and send them home. Now, think about that. A bus takes your 6 year old home to a house with no power and no parents to help them find a way to stay warm. That sounds like a disaster to me. What could I have done. I had to let them go if the power had not come back on. Next was the panic by the general public. What were they going to do without their drugs. I could have given them enough to last a day until things got back to normal, but what if the power had been off more than a day or a week? I don't think they would have like us not being there to help them. And, what if the Internet were turned off like in Egypt? You see, everything operates off the net these days. You would have to use cash to pay and your would be paying full price. No credits cards. No insurance adjudications. No electronic faxes. No communications. It would be like it was when I first started practicing. Primitive to some, but familiar to me....but not to the young practitioners in our company who have never practiced without a computer.
Eventually, the day got back to normal, to some extent. I got caught up and eventually headed home only to get a message from one of my employees showing me the next crisis which occurred just after I left. The sub freezing temperatures finally took their toll on our plumbing and a major fire control nozzle popped in the front of the store shooting water for about 20 feet out the front of the store. I bet it will be a sea of ice by sundown which is now. Yep, Old Man Winter does not like me.
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| Ice Rink Under Construction |
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