A pipe burst yesterday. It’s in an unheated bonus room, so I started up my portable heater when it froze. The rest of the house was fine, so I soldiered on with my lazy Christmas Eve day. Then I noticed the water pressure in the house dropped. The pipe burst, and it was kind of unsurprising as there’s almost no insulation out there for the pipes.

The new whole house shutoff I had installed this year worked a treat, but it left me without flowing water, but …

I filled up my big bathtub last week before the cold snap hit. I happened to have been sous vide-ing some beef in a large container. I keep a 7-gallon water container filled. I always keep a pitcher of water in the fridge. And my humidifiers were all filled and misting my place into a decent humidity. Good planning and happenstance!

Then the utility announced rolling blackouts. The fire, with ample wood, was already going for heat and ambiance. I ended up “roughing it” in my house, making tacos with a big cast iron grille on the fire, and ready to read books with my well charged eInk reader in the dark. No blackout for me, thankfully, so I watched a bunch of non-Christmas Christmas movies.

The bottom line: a little bit of advanced planning paid dividends when things weren’t going right. nIt makes it so much easier to make it into an adventure instead of a disaster. Happy Holidays, y’all!