Internet was slowed, but we had little power, so we resorted to cell phones, which slowed to a crawl or did not work. Some towers have backup gens. They said that some official work was done to fill up the ATT generators. Our phones use Sprint/Tmobil and were spotty for days.
I played a lot of Sudoku by the window for light.
One major problem for me was the Walmart and it's pharmacy being closed for days. After being closed from Tuesday til Thursday, with each day being promised the pharmacy would open, they did not. On Friday I went in there and the pharmacy was locked up. I told the manager I needed prescriptions desperately, and he said "Sorry, no one goes into pharmacy without a pharmacist, and our pharmacist lives 2 hours away in Houston. They can't get here because of road conditions." I told him Hwy 290 was passable, and that they should have a solution, rather than a single point of failure. After a moment of thought, I told him, "Look, I'm not being hostile, but I'm going to call our Sheriff to see if they'll send a deputy in a 4WD vehicle to get your pharmacist." He knew I was serious as I turned around to try and get some supplies from the barren shelves. A moment later on the intercom, they paged me, and told me the pharmacist is on the way and should be there within an hour and a half or two. I gave them 3 hours then went back in there and they were there. Squeaky wheel got greased at Walmart.
The fortunate thing for me was, on Tuesday the 9th, my son tested positive from Covid. I informed my work, and they sent me home for the week. I knew if I got Covid, we would need a lot of food....so I stopped at the store and bought a huge amount of food (cold weather was secondary behind my worry of getting Covid).
I got home and had the wife/kids put away the food and I got to splitting firewood. The firewood turned out to be a Godsend. This country boy's backup generator in the form of wood. I still had to split more later on the weekend.
WE HAD 5 (F-I-V-E) icy cold fronts come through, plus the ground was already cold from the initial cold snap. We were below zero here for a record number of days, and it might have gotten up to 33F a couple of afternoons for a few minutes, only to drop back down and make ice on top of the snow on top of the ground.
I almost slipped and busted my arse numerous times. I should have listened to the guy on the radio and got out my really old spiked golf shoes.
So our blessings were firewood, food, and not having to go to work because of Covid.
