Here in small town NW Oregon, we ran a similar gauntlet. Thanksgiving came and went as expected. We celebrated at my daughters house with all of the family present. That included my oldest daughter, the host daughter and her husband, my granddaughter and grandson, plus a coupled of my granddaughters friends that didn't have anyone to celebrate with. Inviting such people is kind of a family tradition started when my kids were young. Then three days later we were informed that my granddaughter had covid and we'd all been exposed. This to spite the fact that she'd had both shots and it was long enough for them to have been fully effective.

So now what to do? I called my supervisor at the bus company (I drive school bus to keep myself occupied while retired); We already had to start school two weeks late because one of our driver had got covid and exposed three others. That left us with two few drivers to cover all the routes until the quarantine time passed. The driver that got covid died and even now we can only cover one missing driver. So my supervisor asked about "how exposed was I"? I told her that while I had given my granddaughter a hug, I hadn't been within 6 feet of her otherwise. I think my supervisor was desperate and made a risky decision to have me keep driving. I did get a home test and it turned up "inconclusive". It turned out that I didn't have it. But my granddaughter did miss two weeks work while she had what she described as a bad case of flu.

Like in Spokane, we were treated to a colorful display of Christmas lights. Then Christmas Day, we were back at my daughters for the traditional feast. This time the guest list included my granddaughters boyfriend (the culprit who exposed her to covid; turns out he missed Thanksgiving with us because he was sick and found out Friday after that it was covid) her first boyfriend (She just turned 23). Anyway, it was a good day and a great family celebration. But the weather was forecasting some serious snow for our little town in the foothills of the Coast Range. Since my daughter lives in the big city (Hillsboro) and we have a 1000 foot hill to go over to get home, we kept a close eye on the one traffic cam on that route. We bugged out just before 7 when the traffic cam showed it was snowing.

We got home about 8:00. (it's normally a 45 minute drive). We woke up to 8 inches of the white stuff and it was still snowing. Total accumulation when all was said and done was nearly a foot, making my driveway (up hill to get to the road) impassible. Not that I'm equipped to drive in 12 inches of snow anyway. The temps weren't forecast to get above freezing until the first of the year.

So there we were, snowed in. No big deal. We were prepared to not go anywhere. All was fine and good until Thursday when we lost power early in the morning. Not an unusual event here during the winter. It usually comes back on pretty quickly. Most often within an hour or two. Seems BPA had a main feed to our area go down. That combined with numerous small downs in out feed that the couldn't track down until BPA got things up and running. Fifteen hours later, we got power back. That was better than our neighbor, to houses down. Because of the patch work lines in our area they are on a different grid than we are. They were without power for 26 hours.

To top things off, school was supposed to start on January 3rd, but the winter conditions hung on and black ice kept the buses off the road (and many of the teachers house bound) so it didn't start until the 5th. With the two weeks lost at the beginning of the year we're betting the kids will be lucky to get out of school by 4th of July.

Now to add to your rant. I'm 76 (77 come March) and I'm inundated with phone calls and emails because the interest rates have fallen so low and surely with the housing market so great (my house has gained over 100K in value in the last five years when I bought it) I must want to refinance and get some of that money out of it. Really? I'll be lucky to live long enough as is to pay off my house. My house is pretty much all of my estate. Oh I have about 20 grand in a 401k and 7 or so in savings, but the bulk of my material wealth is tied up in the house. I'm hoping when the time comes my kids will be able to sell it quickly and split about 100 to 200 thou or so. If I dump my current mortgage with 25 years to go, I'll have no chance of living long enough to have any real equity. Plus being retired and having an income of about 37K I doubt I'd qualify for a hundred, ten grand loan anyway. I'm in good health and with a little luck, I just might live to pay off the mortgage. So all in all, no thanks.