Nancy Stibers, 57, was trying to get online when Patch caught up with her at the Long Gate Barnes & Noble. 

Stibers, who lives in Dorsey Search, has been out of power since Friday, June 29, and said she’s been “sleeping in the basement and going out to eat and spending as much time outside as possible, because when I’m outside, I get really hot; so when I go inside, I’m cooler.” 

Tell us in comments: How are you coping with lost power?

On Monday, she said she hoped to get Internet access at the Ellicott City Barnes & Noble but couldn’t get online; so she went to try and recharge her devices at a friend’s house. 

“At least it’s not the middle of winter,” said Stibers, as she packed up to leave.

Work was cancelled Monday for Stibers, who is an occupational therapist for the Howard County Public School System.

On Sunday, the school system announced that 18 schools would be closed Monday due to power outages.

Howard County blogger Lisa Schlossnagle, a mother of three from Fulton, is also on her third day without power.

"I think at 5 Saturday afternoon, I was ready for power to come back on," she told Patch. "My sense of adventure is gone. It’s been challenging not to grumble and complain."

Schlossnagle said she has spent some of the heat wave with friends and family who have power.

She said it took her children an hour on Saturday morning to notice the power was out.

"My 5-year-old said, ‘Why is the refrigerator black inside?'”

For some, the outages bolstered business. Maria Modresky, a barista at the Starbucks in Ellicott City’s Barnes & Noble, said that despite the fact that every table was filled at the café Monday, “this is slow" compared to the past two days. 

On Saturday and Sunday, “the line was down to the stairs and it didn’t stop,” said Modresky, 19. “I haven’t seen lines like that since Christmas.”

Normally, two or three staffers would be working behind the counter, but over the weekend, the amount of customers required four or five people to work the shift. “I’m not complaining,” said Modresky, who said she appreciated the hours.

Across Montgomery Road, the YMCA was offering free showers for nonmembers, a service the YMCA of Central Maryland is providing at all of its locations (except Randallstown, which is without power).

Roughly 20 nonmembers came Saturday to shower at the Ellicott City YMCA and “at least that [amount] on Sunday,” said Melanie Jester, the front desk membership representative. More people will probably show up Monday, she added, because the YMCA is open longer.

“You can tell who’s without power because they come in with their hairdryers and flatirons,” said Jester.

Sue Krauch, 75, who was waiting to speak with the teacher of her YMCA class, said she thinks her location on Ridge Road prevented her from losing power.

“It just blinked. We never lost power,” said Krauch. “I’m wondering if being next to the post office is a perk. It’s newer, so everything is underground.”

Not everybody in Ellicott City was so lucky, she said.

“Yesterday I drove up [Route] 40 and some lights were out, some were on….My son lives up on College Avenue, and he got [power back] Sunday,” said Krauch. 

Where Krauch lives, in a senior apartment complex, she said the only casualty was television service.

“We have air conditioning but some of them really do miss [cable],” said Krauch of her neighbors. “Last night around 7, it came back on."

Krauch continued: "You know, we’re not the pioneers we used to be. You don’t remember before air conditioning, but I remember as a kid, once in a while, on a very hot night…my mother would spread a quilt on the living room floor, and we thought that was the greatest thing. We did live without it at one time.”

- With reporting from Lisa Rossi