Our house was not damaged. A falling branch put one small dent on the hood of my car.

We have a wood stove that has kept us warm and has provided a good cooking surface. We have a good supply of wood; we typically use about four cords of wood per season, anyway.

We share a house with my wife’s parents. After sharing in the adventure with us for more than three days, they’ve gone to stay with my wife’s sister on the Cape.

I’m writing from Panera Bread in Westborough. I’ve had some access to Internet services by way of my Blackberry, but I’ve needed to keep my phone off much of the time to save the battery.

Here are some of my notes in no particular order of time or importance:

• Electricity gives us evenings. It’s dark by five o’clock, so we eat early, talk for a while after dinner, read as best as we can by light from candles, oil lamps, or flashlights. By eight o’clock, though, we’re ready to turn in.
• We got to see a lot more of our neighbors, particularly during the first two days, as we worked outside to clear away what we could. The
• Most of the houses on the street have wood stoves or fireplaces.
• Our electric, phone, and cable wires were draped at angle across the street and then held on the ground by a large branch. One knucklehead in a large SUV couldn’t make it under the wires and so drove across our neighbor’s lawn.
• Conserving battery power, particularly for the unusual batteries that are in cell phones, cameras, or big flashlights, is very important. We have plenty of D and AA batteries, so we can use our radios to find out what’s going on out yonder.
• Our neighbor remarked, “The romance of candles is gone.”
• We work hard during daylight, clearing away branches and brush, work that’s not familiar to these muscles and joints.
• Having town water and sewer made things immeasurably easier. We took a ride to Phillipston on Sunday and saw a man getting buckets of water from a small pond. I talked with someone this morning who had been getting five-gallon buckets of water from a neighbor so that they could use their toilets.
• WTAG has done a great job keeping people informed. Good, old AM radio comes through in an emergency. Many other stations are operated by remote robots and cannot carry local news.
• It was very disappointing to listen to WBUR or read the Sunday Boston Globe to find scant mention of the fact that more than 100,000 people were without power. If it isn’t happening in Boston, it doesn’t exist.
• Verizon’s landline service stayed on for a couple of days, even though the wire was lying on the ground. It wasn’t until a car snagged the wire and pulled it from the pole that the service stopped.
  That said, we found that we could get by pretty well with just the cell phones and may drop landline service.
• I was able to use Twitter from my Blackberry to send a few updates that family and friends picked up on Facebook.
• While we were trying to keep the house warm, we also had to contend with keeping food cold. The cellar’s temp has stayed in the low to mid-40s and served as our interim refrigerator. We had melted ice cream for dessert on Saturday night.
• We prepare our large meals during the daylight so we can more easily see what we’re doing.
• Our neighbors got their power back mid-day on Sunday.
• During the night, if we sleep through, the indoor temperature dropped to the mid-50s. The temp in the cellar bottomed out at 41°
• Kudos to the Michauds who deliver our newspapers.
• I wonder if we’ll change our ways after being without power for these many days. I suspect not.