Born and bred Maine folks are noted for being hardy, ready to face hardships of all kinds and survive. Why, then, is it that a few days without cable television, telephones and computer services, such as email and Internet access, make us feel so deprived? We were among the lucky ones who experienced only a brief power outage during the recent snowstorm, or we would have had an added excuse to complain.

We made it through the end of the Patriots game Sunday before the screen went blank, although some local folks were cut short in the fourth quarter. From then until mid-morning Wednesday, life was much quieter than normal around our house.

Reading and listening to Sirius music helped fill the void. We say helped, but in truth, it was limited, at best.

In just 24 hours, we were already itchy for our daily fix of news — going online to check out the Boothbay Register’s Morning Catch on our email, to www.boothbayregister.com for updated local news stories, and to daily newspaper sites.

We don’t own a “regular’’ radio (that won’t happen again!) so all we could do was buy a paper on the newsstand.

By Tuesday, however, we were really going through withdrawal. It was Election Day, and we needed almost hourly updates on voter turnouts and other related news. Come Tuesday evening, things were really bad. For over 50 years, we’ve listened to election returns well into the wee hours of the morning, dozing off only to awaken and get an update. With several races and bond issues too close to call, we were anxious for news.

When we awakened Wednesday morning with still no TV or a way to access information on our computer, we grabbed our cellphone to get all the dope on the elections, feeling we’d been cheated out of an important day in our life when hour-by-hour news is essential — at least to us.

Now that it’s over, we feel a bit guilty that we’ve become so accustomed to the conveniences of TV, telephone and computer access that we grumbled to ourselves (nobody else was listening) from Sunday night to Wednesday morning.

We especially felt badly that while we had only experienced minor inconveniences, thousands of Maine residents, many of them right here in Lincoln County, had been without power — heat and lights — since early Sunday morning, and some were facing the possibility of not having their power restored until late in the week.

We also remembered that while we were inside, hundreds of workers were putting in long hours cutting down trees, restoring power and cable, assisting motorists who had gone off the road, plowing and sanding streets and highways, and answering calls flooding dispatch offices.

We weren’t prepared for a snowstorm this early in November, especially after all of the wonderful fall weather we’d been experiencing. We’re also spoiled because the coastline so often misses these storms. Not this time!

Once again, we are ashamed that we felt sorry for ourselves when we should have been counting our blessings.

We must admit, though, that we hope this winter doesn’t bring any more extended outages. Like most of you, we do enjoy today’s modern conveniences and technology and we hate to do without them. Our ancestors would no doubt not be too proud of us.