Kosmo, Author at Lazy Man and Money

Things I’m Looking Forward to in 2021

January 1, 2021 by Kosmo Leave a Comment

I hope your New Year is starting off well. The following is an article from Kosmo. I’ll be spending the weekend preparing some articles to help with typical New Year’s Resolutions for next week.

2020 has been a year that many of us would like to forget. As we finally flip the calendar, I’m looking forward to 2021 being much different. Here are the things I’m looking forward to in 2021.

Getting Vaccinated

The COVID-19 vaccinations have begun in the United States. I don’t have any health conditions that would put me in the highest risk category (although, like many Americans, I have hypertension), so I’ll be waiting a while until the higher risk people are inoculated. I look forward to the vaccine causing the curve to not only be flattened, but beaten into the ground.

Hopefully, we remember the lessons we’ve learned from COVID-19. There will be another epidemic of some sort in the future. It might be two years from now, or twenty, or two hundred. The next time we’re hit by an epidemic, we need to leverage what we’ve learned from this experience, rather than starting from square one.

Please do your part and get vaccinated, too. If you have concerns, discuss them with your doctor.

Vacation

We visited Door County, Wisconsin in 2017 and thoroughly enjoyed it. We planned a return trip to the same Airbnb in 2019, but it was derailed a family health situation. The owner ended up refunding 100% of his portion – despite being entitled to keep half of it – and we only lost the AirBNB’s portion of the reservation.

We tried again for 2020, only to be derailed by COVID-19 this time. We were able to use the entire amount of the trip toward a rescheduled trip in 2021. I’m really looking forward to a nice vacation at the beach.

Kids back in school

Some kids have excelled in online school, whereas others have struggled. My kids have excelled. My 5th grader is in the gifted program, and my 7th grader recorded a 3.87 GPA in her first trimester. They’ve kept in contact with friends over the phone and the internet.

Nonetheless, it’s not the experience they want. Although they did choose online school for safety reasons, they look forward to physically returning to school next fall, so they can hang out with their friends.

I’m also looking forward to this. Mostly, I look forward to it because it will make my kids happy. But I’d also like to be able to attend a work audio meeting without hearing a fight breaking out upstairs. We could use a bit less togetherness at times.

Last pinewood derby ever

My son is in Cub Scouts. Honestly, it has been a great experience. The one thing I dread every year is the pinewood derby. I am not someone who is good at building things. Trying to figure out a design that my son will like and that we can actually pull off is always a challenge. I’m never more relieved than when his car successfully navigates the track for the third and final time. We’re never going to win the derby – the goal is to end up somewhere in the middle of the pack. Putting the pinewood derby in the rearview mirror will take some of the winter stress out of my life. The Scouts, however, will remain a part of our lives.

First scout weeklong camp

My daughter is a girl scout. She has always been shy. For several years, we have attended the “daddy and me” overnight camp at the girl scout camp. We have always had a great time. I even managed to be the talk of the camp one year, when I dumped my kayak in the lake. Most importantly, it has been a good experience for her to interact with a different group of kids and come out of her shell a bit.

Several times, we asked her if she wanted to do a solo camp for a week. The answer was always a firm “no”. She didn’t want to be in a group of strangers without a parent around.

After the 2019 camp, she changed her mind. Yes, she would like to go to camp by herself. This was a huge change. We booked her for a 2020 camp – and then had to cancel when COVID came. We’ll try this again in 2021.

A new job?

I have been casually job hunting lately. I may end up with a new job soon, or I may end up staying where I’m at. If I were a betting man, I’d bet that I’ll be starting something new in the next couple of months.

I’ve worked in the same industry for 20+ years, but many of the positions I’m looking at are in other industries. Quite honestly, I’d like to diversify my experience a bit, so that I’m not pigeonholed into one type of work.

I’m written a full article about the job hunt, so I won’t bore you with the details.

My stamps

I began collecting stamps during the pandemic. My initial plan was pretty straightforward – collect every distinct design through 1970, but do not pursue watermark or paper variations. By my count, there are about 650 such stamps.

The good news is that I’ve collected about 540 of those stamps, including everything from 1941-1970. The bad news is that many of the remaining stamps are quite expensive. The mitigating factor is that many of these are fairly ugly postal fiscal stamps – stamps that could be used for either tax or postage. I won’t cry if my collection ends up missing a few expensive and ugly stamps that aren’t even normal postage stamps.

The bigger problem is that my collection has expanded beyond New Zealand. Someone in a Facebook group was nice enough to send me thousands of stamps. All I had to do was pay for the postage. I still have tons to sort through, but I’ve gotten exposed to enough other stamps that I’ve begun to diversify my collection. I have an album for the USA and a smaller one for Austria, and I’m sure I’ll be adding an album or two for the countries of the world. My goal is to collect a stamp for as many stamps-issuing entities as I can, as well as collected a few pages of stamps for countries of interest, such as Great Britain, Australia, and the Antarctic territories.

The Olympics

The International Olympic Committee postponed the Olympics when it became apparent that it would be a terrible idea to bring in hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world, have them share common spaces, and send them back to their home countries. That would have been a recipe for a massive super spreader event.

The Olympics are, for now, scheduled for 2021. I love the Olympics, and I’ll be glued to the TV. I primarily watch track and field and swimming, but I’ll watch bits and pieces of many other sports as well.

What about you?

What are you looking forward to in 2021?

Another Job Hunt?

December 28, 2020 by Kosmo 2 Comments

The following is from frequent contributor Kosmo

Three years ago, I was in the middle of a job hunt. I took you along for the journey. I eventually landed a position about a month before my old job ended. For those of you who weren’t along on that journey, the company decided to get rid of remote workers, and I was one of hundreds affected.

I’ve been in my current role since March of 2018, and it has been an enjoyable experience. The work has been interesting, and I’ve worked with great people – both my co-workers and the business partners we create systems for. I’ve even interviewed for some manager positions. It has been pretty awesome.

A reorganization was announced a couple of months ago. One hundred and fifty people in our IT department were laid off. The programmer who sat next to me was one of the people affected. I was moved to a new team and immediately went from being the top expert on my old systems to a complete novice on the new ones. Even the potential of a manager role became less interesting as a result of the changes. This isn’t the first reorg in recent years, but it’s the first one that has had a direct impact on me.

In the coming weeks, I lost much of the fire that had made me a dynamic employee. The effort to handle the fallout of multiple recent reorgs is taking time away from more productive work. It’s frustrating. I want to do work that is difficult and challenging. Many of my recent tasks fall short of that bar. Eventually, I made the decision to begin a new job search. This job search is different than the previous one in a lot of ways.

1. Urgency

My previous job search was driven by the fact that I would be losing my job on a particular date. I left no stone unturned in an effort to make sure I had a new job by the time the old one ended. I ended up in one of the best possible jobs. A lot of the jobs I applied for had some serious warts. Many weren’t a great fit for my skills or had long commutes.

There is no urgency in my current job search. Although my new area doesn’t see me as quite the rock star that my old area did (and still does – as I’m still pulled in when needed), I’m relatively safe in my position. I can afford to take my time and wait for the right position.

2. Preparation

When I kicked off my last job search, I had been caught completely off guard. My resume was outdated and I hadn’t done even casual job hunting in a decade. I wasn’t even sure how the industry even referred to someone with my skill set. It took quite a bit of time to get my resume squared away and to get my job search focused on jobs that would be a good fit. I needed to figure out a new-fangled thing called LinkedIn.

I have made an effort to keep my resume updated recently. Every couple of months, I pull up my resume and make relevant changes – adding recent accomplishments, new responsibilities, and any recently acquired skills. At the same time, I also removed aspects that are no longer relevant.

3. Location

My last job search was limited to companies within an hour drive of my home. We have roots in this area – my wife’s career is with a local organization, and we have two kids in school. Relocating for a new job was a last resort.

As a result of COVID-19, A lot of companies have become more accepting of remote workers. Some even advertise themselves as “remote first” organizations. This means that geography is no longer a limiting factor. If I can work from my ~~dungeon~~ basement, it doesn’t matter if the team is located in New York City, Miami, or Topeka.

The flip side of this is that the companies are also able to cast a wider net. They aren’t limited to employees in their geographical area. So, while there might be more potential jobs for me, there are also more potential applicants.

Overall, I see this as a net gain. I should be able to focus on the jobs that are the best fit for my skills, instead of simply looking at the jobs that are nearby. Being located in Iowa also gives me a cost-of-living advantage over applicants from large metro areas.

The search begins

I’m writing this on Christmas Eve. I kicked off my job search on December 12. How’s it going? Well, it’s definitely starting off better than the last one.

A friend and former colleague works at a company about an hour south of where I live. It’s a considerably smaller company than the one I currently work for, but still a company that does more than a billion dollars of business every year. The upside of a smaller company is that there’s considerably more autonomy and not as much red tape. In other words, more time spent on productive work. It’s a similar position to my friend’s, but with a bit more focus on technical skills, such as a bit of minor data wrangling.

My friend – let’s call him Bryan, because that’s his name – has mentioned the position to me multiple times in the past few months. It has always sounded like a great fit. The reason for my lack of interest has always been the same – the commute. A commute of an hour each way isn’t the greatest sacrifice in the world, but it’s simply not something I’m interested in doing.

I pinged Bryan a few days ago to ask if there was any chance his company was considering 100% remote candidates for this position. No, but they were looking at 2-3 remote workdays per week. I spent a weekend thinking about this and decided that a split of 2 days in the office and 3 days remote would be acceptable.

Bryan put my resume in front of his boss on Monday. His boss reached out via email and we set up a call from Tuesday afternoon. I wasn’t technically a candidate at this point – I hadn’t formally applied through the standard process. This was probably the first time in my life where I had used my social network to gain an inside track for a position.

Interview

Tuesday’s call went well. The position seems interesting. I would basically be coordinating a multi-year implementation of a new HRIS (human resources information system) system. I’ve taken a look at the vendor solution and it looks like an interesting and complex system to implement. Lots of moving pieces.

The manager is a little bit on the fence about whether the position will require two days in the office per week, or three. I’m pretty confident that if everything else aligns, I can convince him to do two. The company’s location works against them in attracting candidates. They’re located in a small city (those of you from large urban areas would call it a town), and it’s a fairly long commute from any of the surrounding metro areas. They’re growing and want to attract high-quality candidates. To do that, they’re most likely going to have to be more flexible on work from home. Management is slowly coming around to this idea. Their employees have been working from home for about nine months now, and they’re realizing that an employee who’s working from home is actually working – they aren’t just playing Mario all day.

At the end of Tuesday’s call, the manager asked me to formally apply for the position, so that we could move forward with the process. On Wednesday, HR contacted me to set up a panel interview for the first week of January. Things are moving about as fast as possible, considering the fact that it’s impossible to arrange interviews during the holidays, due to too many key players being out of the office.

The future

My friend won’t be a part of the interview panel. This makes sense, as including him would compromise the integrity of the process. He has, however, been able to give me good insight into the different roles within the company. I’ve also asked him questions about how the company approaches certain problems. At this point, I’m getting a lot of good answers. Although it’s a smaller company than my current one, it seems to be well-managed.

I’ll spend a lot of time in the next week preparing for the interview – and watching football.

Post-COVID Industry Analysis

December 7, 2020 by Kosmo 3 Comments

Today’s article comes from long-time contributor, Kosmo. I added some of my own thoughts near the end.

The COVID-19 vaccine is nearly ready for prime time. By the end of the year, the highest risk patients will be getting vaccinated. It will probably be at least a couple of months before my wife and I will be eligible for shots, and even longer for the kids. But at some point, things will begin to get back to normal – or as near to normal as possible. Some industries are going to see longer-term effects and will be transformed – either positively or negatively – by COVID experience.

The winners

Delivery

Delivery services have seen a huge surge during the pandemic. Employees of these businesses have performed a valuable service by limiting the number of people who need to be inside stores and restaurants.

My family has made heavy use of delivery services. We haven’t been inside a restaurant since March – but we’ve had many meals delivered since then. In fact, we’re getting fried chicken delivered in about fifteen minutes. For us, it’s basically cost neutral when compared to dining out. The tip for delivery is roughly the same as an in-restaurant tip. There’s a delivery charge, but that’s offset by not paying for four drinks. I’ll drink 50 cents worth of generic cola instead of paying $2.19 in a restaurant. The guy who runs the dominant local delivery service is an acquaintance from our neighborhood, so it’s nice to be able to help out his business at the same time. I’m sure we’ll continue to use delivery more – and dine in restaurants less – even after COVID passes. The food is always hot and tasty, and it’s faster than eating in a restaurant. Also, a restaurant is no longer blacklisted simply because one of us doesn’t like the food. My wife and kids can get Mexican food delivered, and I can throw a Totino’s pizza in the microwave. (Totino’s says not to microwave them, but just nuke them for 4:30, rotating once. Almost as good as using the oven.)

Pickup

The cousin of delivery is pickup. Not every restaurant in the area has delivery services, but many of them have pickup. Order online and have them bring the food our to you. Personal interaction – 15 seconds. Even less exposure if you have them just put the back seat.

I’ve only been inside a grocery store a half dozen times since March. Twice were because the drive-through prescription window wasn’t functioning. If we spend $35, we can get free pickup. Submit the order online and have a store employee figure out where everything is and get it ready for you. Although there have been some occasions where this has ended up taking way too long (hours, in a couple of cases), it’s been a very positive experience overall. I’m going to avoid the inside of grocery stores even after this is over – I’ll happily let someone else do the work. This means that we’ll be doing the bulk of our grocery shopping at that store. Prior to the pandemic, we’d mostly shopped at their competitor. The competitor – a somewhat smaller chain – simply doesn’t have the space to allow for pickup.

We’ve also used pickup from other stores, ranging from Target to Hallmark. Instead of dragging all four of us for a marathon Target trip, we just enter the order over the course of several days, then I run down and pick it up with it’s ready.

Digital distribution

My daughter takes private art classes. The art studio was shuttered by the pandemic, but the business didn’t die. The owner pivoted to Zoom classes, and also recorded a series of lessons that could be purchased individually. The great things about the recorded lessons are that the bulk of the effort is upfront. Her cost – in terms of labor and dollars – is nearly the same whether she sells a particular lesson to one customer or a thousand. It also expands her audience. You might not be free every Thursday from 7-8 PM, but you can consume a canned lesson at your leisure. Obviously, it’s not exactly the same as a live class, and her pricing does reflect this.

It’s important for these “winning” companies to realize that although their business will remain strong in the future, it will likely slide from the current peak. Those companies should position themselves to shrink their footprints a bit in the future so that they’re not trying to support their current overhead with fewer orders.

Neutral

Corporate-owned chain restaurants can come out of this in okay condition. On the one hand, business is suffering. On the other hand, many of their Mom & Pop competitors have been wiped out by the pandemic. Even smaller chains have shuttered some of their locations. The larger chains may have suffered losses in the short term, but when they return to full capacity, the landscape will have changed. Not only will there be fewer Mom & Pop’s and fewer locations for smaller chains, but there will also be a reluctance for entrepreneurs to launch restaurants for a few years. After all, there’s no guarantee that we won’t see another pandemic like this next year – or even five years into the future. This will allow the larger chains to grow their market share.

The losers

Mom and Pop Restaurants

A lot of Mom & Pop’s have been completely wiped out by the pandemic. Even chains with multiple locations have been affected. A local sandwich place that served premium hot sandwiches closed. The quasi-Italian place near my office also closed. My office complex has a few thousand people. It’s on the outer edge of the metro areas, without much of a residential population. The Italian place was probably drawing about 90% of its business from my office. My office has been shut down since March. We’ll be working from home through at least the end of June. Even after we do return, we’ll probably only be in the office a fraction of the time. The restaurant’s clientele vanished overnight.

Commercial real estate

I’ve been reading the tea leaves to see what my employer will do in the future. My best guess is that the company will strongly pivot to work from home. Perhaps 10-20% of the time in the office. They’ll probably use a “hotel” cube format, reduce the overall footprint, and sell off excess real estate. I think a lot of companies will do this, particularly in areas with high real estate costs. Why pay for a Manhattan cubicle for an employee if they can be just as productive in their hometown of Manhattan, Kansas? In my option, demand for commercial real estate is going to plummet.

Corporate cafeteria, cleaning, custodial

My office complex has two cafeterias. My employer contracted with a third party to provide cafeteria services. Those people haven’t been working since March. My guess is that we’ll only have one cafeteria in the future.

Likewise, my employer contracts with third parties for cleaning, custodial, security, and a variety of other services. As commercial real estate goes from occupied to vacant, these industries will also take a hit.

Editor’s Thoughts

Kosmo has an interesting perspective that I never thought about with delivery services and dining. One of the main reasons I go to restaurants is to get out of the house and be part of the community. I’ve been working from home for 13 years now, and I think most people can now relate that you sometimes have to get out. My tastebuds are more of the Tortino’s and generic soda variety that Kosmo mentions in the article, so I don’t mind a difference in the food itself much of the time.

I completely understand the draw of not having to do grocery shopping. For many people, it must be great to reclaim that time. Personally, I enjoy grocery shopping. I love looking for bargains. I love doing mental calculations and comparisons. I love having “me” time away from the kids outside of the house.

I don’t know how I feel about digital delivery. It seems saturated. I’ve got an endless number of FinCon (personal finance group) talks from 10 years that I know I will never watch. I got a deal on Masterclass and I’ve only watched a little of it. My wife is very much against paying for Zoom karate classes for the kids.

My kids’ school recorded a lot of videos last year for distance learning that they can reuse again, but I don’t think they do. Khan Academy and numerous other places have online lessons. If there was a universal search engine and these got combined under one umbrella for a low price (or free like Khan Academy) it could be really useful. I believe that digital delivery is the key to providing free college in a way that doesn’t get caught up for decades of politics.

Your thoughts

What are your thoughts? Which segments of the economy have been decimated by COVID-19, and which segments will emerge is a reasonably good position?

How COVID-19 Has Changed My Shopping Experience

October 26, 2020 by Kosmo Leave a Comment

We’re more than a half year into the coronavirus pandemic. At this point, even if COVD-19 hasn’t transformed your life in a drastic way, it has likely caused a permanent shift in some of your daily practices. For my family, the entire retail shopping experience has been changed.

Online shopping

We were already doing a lot of online shopping. A considerable amount at Amazon, but also retailers such as Target and Kohls. This has accelerated in recent months, as we’ve made every attempt to shrink our bubble and limit outside exposure. We’re lucky enough to be able to work from home, and the kids are able to attend school remotely. The next step was to push more of our shopping online. It’s rare to have a couple days pass without having a delivery of some sort.

Stockpiling

I wouldn’t say that we’re hoarding, but we’re certainly making an effort to keep more inventory on hand. Even though we’re not facing rampant shortages, we do have stretches of a few weeks where it can be difficult to find items. In the past, we’d keep one spare Tide on hand. Now we have a couple extras. We buy Clorox wipes whenever we see them, of course. Spottings are as rare as Bigfoot sightings.

Grocery pickup

I have always hated grocery shopping. There are always items I struggle to find, and I end up backtracking. Canned fruit and fruit cups are in two completely different sections of the store. Why? Nobody knows.

The local grocery store offers free pickup for orders of more than $35. When we first started using this in March, it was a bit of a mess. Even if you showed up in your correct time window, you could end up waiting an hour or more, and items were often missing from the order. The process has gotten much more efficient. In the best situations, it takes less than five minutes. Even if things go a bit awry, it’s faster than a trip to the actual grocery store. Overall, it’s a great experience.

Although our first foray into pickups was for groceries, many other retailers off the same service. The aforementioned Target has a pretty slick process. They’ve actually improved it in the past couple of weeks. Previously, you entered your car information, and they’d confirm your identity verbally. With the recent changes, a numeric code pops up on your phone’s screen, and you simply hold your phone up to your window.

A number of smaller retailers at the local mall are currently offering drive-up service. For some small retailers, it’s a lifeline to keep afloat, and likely won’t remain in place after the pandemic passes. For other retailers, it will remain an important channel in the future.

Movie Theaters

At the age of 45, I may have attended my last movie. I had soured on the experience in recent years anyway. The local theater moving to a reservation system made things much worse. Previously, if you got stuck behind tall people, or loud people, or whatever, you could simply move. Now you need to go out and change your reserved seats. Additionally, the seats have a tendency to hurt my back. In general, attending a movie in person had become a much worse experience than streaming something online – and much more expensive as well. I’m content to just wait for the latest blockbuster to roll onto Netflix.

Dining

I’m going to sound like a grumpy old man, but I’ve never really cared about the ambience of a dining experience. My primary goal, especially with two kids, has always been to avoid having the experience swallow up an entire evening. That goal has been accomplished, at least in the short term. I haven’t eaten inside a restaurant since March 6.

That doesn’t mean that we haven’t eaten food from a restaurant. About once or twice a week, we use a local service called Chomp that is a competitor to companies like Grubhub. Chomp has a cool logo (dinosaur) and the majority of the company is owned by local restaurant owners. The guy who started Chomp lives in an adjacent neighborhood, and has been an active volunteer in the community’s youth sports program. Being able to help this guy’s small (but growing) business while also getting access to restaurant food is killing two birds with one stone. Not every restaurant participates, of course, but we’ve gotten a wide variety of food delivered – everything from shrimp to pancakes. We’ve also had a few pizzas delivered, of course. There are occasional glitches – like the time Popeye’s only gave us three meals instead of four – but in general the order are accurate and are delivered hot.

At some point, I’m sure we’ll resume in-restaurant dining, but my guess is that this will be less frequent, and that we’ll continue to use the delivery service.

We’re probably going to steer clear of buffets for quite a while, though. The pandemic has heightened awareness of some unsanitary practices of some of the guests.

One restaurant that has completely dropped off the radar is McDonalds. I’m not sure if the kids (13 and 10) have just completely outgrown it at this point, or whether it simply loses out to delivery options, but the kids haven’t even asked for McD lately. I have used the Hardees drive through a few times. I love their monster biscuit and bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit.

Subway is another restaurant that has gotten completely neglected. My guess is that we’ll eventually return to Subway when we need to grab something quick before rushing off to a school event. But with the social calendar bare at the moment, there just hasn’t been the need to eat quickly.

In non-shopping news

My company hasn’t announced a plan to return to the office. They’re planning to work on the plan over the course of the next month. My guess is that we’ll return to the office sometime in late spring, that some areas will remain primarily work from home, and that the company will use “hotel” cubes in an attempt to reduce the real-estate footprint. If given the option, I would probably only come into the office about once per week. Occasionally, if we’re working on something like screen design, it can be helpful to be gathered in front of a big whiteboard. A lot of my recent work has involved abstract concepts where the need is more cut and dried. In those cases, remote working is a great solution. I’m in the process of moving to a new area. That area supports our tax area, and I’m guessing that even more of my work will deal with the abstract and less of it will deal with user interfaces.

When I worked in the office, I’d buy things from vending machines pretty frequently. I’m guessing this is another habit that I’ve shed. Considering the markup on items in the machines, this should save a fair amount of money over the course of the year.

In case you’re worried that I’ll eventually become a complete hermit, that probably won’t happen. We do look forward to making occasional forays in the outside world at some point. We have a trip to Door County (Wisconsin) that had to be delayed and is now scheduled for June of 2021. We enjoyed a previous trip a few years ago and are looking forward to the encore trip.

Was I Prepared for an Emergency?

August 21, 2020 by Kosmo 5 Comments

On August 10, my state of Iowa was hit by a derecho. This is a type of storm with destructive straight-line winds. In this particular case, winds topped out at 140 mph. The city of Cedar Rapids, a dozen miles north of me, was devastated. I’m writing this article ten days after the storm, and quite a few people still don’t have power, and even more don’t have internet access. The road to recovery is going to be a long one. The city has lost half its tree canopy, and already 22,000 tons of debris have been removed.

“A windstorm”

The early forecasts weren’t particularly concerning to me. There was going to be a storm with high windows in the afternoon, with the possibility of people losing power. That’s not particularly rare – it’s not unusual for storms to briefly knock out power. My neighborhood has buried power lines, so we’re generally less affected than other people.

My wife and I are both working from home, due to COVID-19. She works upstairs, and I have a desk downstairs, in the finished basement. As the storm approached, she and the kids came downstairs. I continued to work, updating documentation in Jira. I was working right up to the point where we lost power and internet access.

The aftermath

My wife and kids went back upstairs after the storm passed. I attempted to continue working. I tried using my cell phone as a hot spot. This didn’t work the best, but I was able to sporadically get connected. Eventually, I stopped trying, and just did some work offline.

I expected the power to be back within the hour (as it usually is), but a few hours had passed and still no electricity.

The FDA recommends discarding refrigerated food if you lose power for 4 hours and frozen food if you lose power for 48 hours. This assumes that you have left the doors closed to prevent warm air from getting inside. As the four-hour mark approached, we ate an early supper. Anything that didn’t get eaten was going to get thrown away.

Later, we went through the process of taking everything out of the fridge, cataloging it, and throwing it out. Luckily, the next day was trash day. Many homeowner’s policies have coverage for refrigerated contents. In our case, there was no deductible. We turned in a claim for $300, and it was promptly paid. $300 might sound high, but there’s a lot of stuff in your fridge. We had 75 unique items on our list.

Nightfall

We chatted outside with the neighbors. The main topic was the power outage – when would we have power back? Hopefully by morning. The local news stations had been knocked off the air, so nobody was really sure what was going on.

We had plenty of flashlights around the house, but not many spare batteries. I went onto Amazon and ordered a bunch of D batteries since we didn’t know how long this might last.

[Editor’s Note: We lost power the week before for about 4 hours. We have a ton of AA and AAA batteries for kids toys, which work well in some of our smaller flashlights. I didn’t plan it this way, but it worked out.]

I used my work laptop to top off my phone’s battery. Then I remembered that the battery charging packs for the car had a 12V port. The battery packs didn’t have much battery left, as it has been about a month since I had last charged them. Still, they had plenty of juice to charge a couple of phones. We also had quite a few portage power packs for the phones. We’d be able to keep our phones charged for a while.

My wife ordered a couple of battery-powered fans. Days later, I realized that we actually had a couple of them. I’d ordered some a couple years ago when my daughter’s Girl Scout camp occurred during a heatwave. Unfortunately, they got put with the camping stuff and forgotten.

I was able to take a hot, albeit dark, shower. Unless you have a well, you don’t need electricity to have water. We have a gas water heater, meaning that we also don’t need electricity to have hot water.

Power!

Around 1:30 AM, we got power back. Hooray! The joy lasted about 90 seconds before the power cut out again. Finally, around 4 AM, the power returned for good.

The next day, we saw the extent of the damage. Our town had been hit with winds of about 80 MPH, meaning that we were spared the brunt of the storm. Almost all of my coworkers were without power, and most of them would be without power for days.

In Cedar Rapids, it looked like a war zone. Power lines were down all over down, and trees had been uprooted and had landed everywhere, including on houses. Each batch of pictures looked worse than the last. It was – and still is – sickening.

Near Des Moines, one of the grocery stores disposed of 800 gallons of spoiled milk by dumping it down a storm drain. That causes a fish kill and they had to pay for the Department of Natural Resources to prevent the water from reaching a river. If it’s not rainwater, it doesn’t belong in a storm drain.

How did we do?

Although my family had fairly minimal impact, it seemed like a good time to see how we fared in terms of disaster preparedness.

Electricity

We don’t have a generator. We almost never lose power for more than a trivial amount of time. Also, I know quite a few people with generators, and in most cases could probably borrow from them. Unfortunately, in this case, the destruction was so widespread that all generators were in use.

Honestly, I doubt that we’ll get a generator. I’m not sure that the risk of this happening again is enough to justify the cost. But I’m definitely giving it more consideration than I had in the past.

In terms of batteries, we were in OK shape. Our cell phones would have lasted for several days on the power we had. I did go ahead and buy some solar-powered battery packs so that we can produce our own power next time. My kids don’t know it, but if we were still without power the next day, I’d have confiscated their chrome books and bled the batteries dry to charge phones.

Food

We wouldn’t have starved. We had peanut butter, cereal, summer sausage, crackers, fruit cups, and some canned goods. Our propane grill could have generated some heat for cooking.

Communications

We do have a landline phone and a low-tech non-electric phone. This worked fine. Our cell phone service was spotty, but we were able to stay in contact.

Housing

We weren’t forced from our home like some people. We do have a six-person tent. At this point, we’ve only used it for cub scout camping events. It wouldn’t be the most comfortable place to sleep, but it would work in a pinch.

How did we do?

Overall, I think we were reasonably well prepared. We should have had more options for power, but we’d have been OK for several days. We may want to look into the best ways to cook various shelf-stable foods on a grill, and maybe buy some extra grill accessories to make it easier.

Have you been through a natural disaster? How did you fare?