Power outages
One of the crosses we must bear living on Cape Cod is having less reliable electrical service than a lot of other areas in this general region. I'm not quite sure why that is, but it is so. Enough so that at least one of my neighbors has invested in a noisy backup generator that he runs when the lights go off.
As they did yesterday, for about eight and a half hours.
NStar, our electric company, had two explanations for why the power went out -- initially, they said that a tree fell and took down wires. Several hours later, the explanation changed to a pole that needed to be "reset" following a car accident. Whatever the case, the cops and Nstar had actually barricaded a nearby road, so it was definitely serious.
I've discovered that you need a lot of things for electricity, like keeping food cold and keeping lights on and keeping the furnace going. None of these things worked yesterday until about 12:30AM, and this was disconcerting.
It didn't keep us from having dinner; I'd been ready to grille some swordfish for Bonnie and myself and some sausage for the kids, so that went ahead, thanks to the flammable and non-electrical-dependent qualities of propane and the fine Weber grille system. We had a salad and made the best of it, eating by candlelight, which Emmeline reminded us was romantic. Bob was grossed out by this.
My PowerBook just happened to have three fully charged batteries, so we ended up using it to watch a couple of movies. Then it was bed-time, and the kids all went to sleep.
By the time the power finally came back on, it was about 60 degrees in the house. I was delighted to hear the furnace kick back into gear, and went to sleep at about 1 in the morning content that the emergency was over.
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and that is a rather unexpected holiday for me -- I just found out on Friday that I didn't have to work today, so I'm going to use the time to try to get my office in some semblance of order, again.
Comments
Hmmph, seems I've had a power flicker today. Not enough to disturb my clocks, just enough that my iMac was waiting for me to log in when I got home.
Posted by: Alphax | January 19, 2004 07:29 PM
Well, at least you aren't going through one of the coldest winters in modern history or anything.
Posted by: James | January 20, 2004 01:21 AM
Power outage for 8 hours? That's nothing. Electricity may be very nice; it rooms well lit without candles, houses warm without wood(Or cool without anything), food cool without ice and PCs running without batteries or solar cells. But electricity isn't REALLY vital, not even nowadays.
A REALLY nasty service outage is when your WATER dies. You can't wash your hands without a pitcher, you can't take a shower, your clothes washing machine won't work, you have to wash dishes BY HAND and, most horrible of all: YOUR TOILET CAN NOT FLUSH WITHOUT HAVING THE ENTIRE TANK FILLED UP BY HAND _EACH TIME_.
Our water AND power once went out for 3 days straight(Monterey Bay Area, California), I hate deregulated utilities very, very much.
(P.S. Alphax, every Mac owner should have a UPS attached, I use APC's BackUPS line)
Eric,
Posted by: Eric D.V.H. | January 30, 2004 04:52 AM