How to Watch the Super Bowl With No Power

It was about a half-hour before kickoff when I decided to take one more pass with my snowblower over my driveway.

I'll clean things up, I thought, And have just enough time to scoop a bowl of chili, grab some Tostitos and plop in front of the TV to cheer Tom Brady onto another Super Bowl victory.

The driveaway was just about clear when the neighborhood fell into darkness. It couldn't be. Did we really just lose power 15 minutes before the kickoff to the Super Bowl? I felt like I was starring in a funny Super Bowl commercial for Eversource.

I quickly finished snow blowing, then started hauling the generator through eight inches of snow into the backyard. It's a small, gasoline-powered generator, but it can power the essentials during an outage. Normally, the essentials consist of our pellet stove, the refrigerator, and our sump pump. On Super Bowl Sunday, those essentials were a little different.

We rushed and brought down my son's reptiles from his room because keeping them warm is a life-or-death situation. You can see their tanks sitting below our TV in the photo.

I ran extension cords to my TV, internet router and cable box. The TV got power, but for some reason, I couldn't get my cable and internet to work. Feeling defeated, I started watching the game on my tiny iPhone screen. I wasn't happy. This was unacceptable, so I continued looking for a solution.

I ran and got my laptop and connected it to my TV with an HDMI cord. Using my phone as a hotspot to get internet on the laptop, I logged onto NFL.com and streamed the game to my laptop, and projected it up onto my TV. Success!

I was able to watch the Patriots, I mean the Bucs, beat the Chiefs.