Micki St. James wrote to ask…
You posted at 8:09 AM that you had no electricity and then at 9:03 PM that you were posting by thumb-tapping on your iPhone. What I want to know is, since you couldn't plug your phone in to recharge it, how did it manage to keep its charge for more than 12 hours? Mine doesn't last that long.
Mine doesn't either so I bought a couple of those portable phone chargers and I keep them charged so I can charge my phone with them. Also, there's this wonderful invention…
You see that thing there? That's the Duracell 2000 Lumen Tri-power Lantern and mine came in so very, very handy during my recent power failure here in L.A. "Mine" in this case is plural because I have several of these and I was glad I did.
What does it do? It's an LED light and you can set it to various levels of brilliance or make it blink. You can also plug a cell phone or other small electronic gizmo into it and recharge that gizmo. And how, you may ask, do you charge your Duracell 2000 Lumen Tri-power Lantern? Well, you can plug into the wall to recharge it or you can stick four "D" cell batteries into it or you can leave it outside in the sun and the little solar panel on top will charge it.
I got a batch of these from Costco and they still have them…for $21.85 and they occasionally go on sale for around fifteen bucks. The last time they were fifteen, I bought a dozen or so and have been giving them out to friends but I had five left — one opened, four unopened. They come fully charged so I opened 'em all up and put them to good use when my house went dark. By the way: Amazon sells them for $29.95 and Walmart sells them for $34.50.