Snow Residuals

There are all sorts of fallout from last week's historic twin blizzards, from roofs falling in to gutters falling off to school days falling short. Here at BT, the snow and sheets of ice continue to slowly slide off the loading dock roof, creating quite a pile of giant ice and snow cubes for the delivery trucks to back in to. (Everywhere you go, you find yourself looking up before you enter.) The recycle bins remain full, but not of bottles and cans, so we fill boxes instead. Our parking lot is short more than a few spaces, where jumbo piles of snow rest instead of cars. Yesterday the melt began, which causes it's own set of problems - especially in the refreezing after dark.

An area of concern for many is getting a delivery of fuel - be it heating oil or propane - and we are one of the victims in this regard. Last night at 7:30 the flames on the line began to flicker and dwindle and in ten minutes there was no flame at all. We have been through a propane outage before - when we first opened and before our delivery schedule was routine - and it is not pretty. Weirdly, last night, after a tense minute or two, it seemed to come back on and I happily sat a pair of hungry ladies. By the time they had ordered a bottle of wine, the gas had gone off again and Kevin called it a night. Two more parties arrived, but the option of soup and (cold) salads was not that appealing and one left. The other made do, as did the ladies with their wine. Most of the other diners' food had gone out, except for Table 17, who were innocently enjoying their appetizers while the drama streamed around them. Desserts were the only salve we could offer, to make up for the slim pickings for dinner, and we gladly did so, as a reward of sorts for the guests' patience and good humor about the whole thing.

The gas man is here now - and thank goodness, since we forgot that our furnace is gas also! - and he will come in and re-light our pilots and things will go on. Those lost days during the snow emergency have caused numerous back-ups for innumerable businesses, including the deliveries of essential goods, and we were apparently one of many in a long line. We probably should be better about keeping track of our gas gauge, but we're not. We just count on it coming as needed.

The silver lining in this cloud? 24 hours. If this outage had occurred at 7:30 tonight, a Friday, when we were more likely to have a full dining room and expecting arrivals for 90 more minutes, we would certainly have lost a large part of the day's business to the snow. As it turns out, we are grateful for the timing, if we have to find some good in the continuing saga of this month of weather events.