Genealogy Without Power

Hurricane Irma is long gone and our power has finally been restored! Four days without electricity was challenging. I honestly don’t know how our ancestors, females especially, survived Florida’s heat and humidity back in the day in those long dresses. The cold water to bathe in doesn’t help!
We were fortunate, as were most of our neighbors, in regards to physical objects being spared. All we had was a leaning fence which we’ve since fixed, a broken mailbox as the wind tore off the door, several dents in my car hood and lots of vegetation debris to rake up. Our next door neighbor lost her mother the day after the storm and our neighbor behind us welcomed a new baby. Nothing like adding more stress to an already difficult time! The cycle of life continues…
For me, I can’t even remember the last week I spent at home and didn’t do any genealogy. It has to have been years ago. Genealogy is so dependent upon online tools today that there was little I could do without electricity.
I was trying to limit my cell phone usage to conserve it so my response to a few clients was terse. Two responded they didn’t know I lived in the storm’s path. One had found me online and the other through a former client. There was no need for them to know my physical location but it still surprised me that they hadn’t.
I love to read out of print books but I had to limit that, too, to conserve battery life on my Kindle. I could use my laptop for a bit to work on the current e-Book I’m writing but it’s an old laptop and the battery life is short so I decided not to do that.
I had gathered all of my most precious documents and did spend about an hour reshelving them in our office. That was the extent of my time invested in genealogy. Now I’m backlogged and better get to work!