Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Powerless

As of this writing, I've been without electricity at Chez Jameson for more than a day, and the power company is not making any promises about when the juice might be restored. A particularly violent thunderstorm came through the area on Sunday afternoon, albeit for a brief time only, and somehow this led to roughly half the county without electricity.

As the high temperature on Sunday skirted 100, I've been unhappy about the situation, to put it mildly. No Aetherwebs is annoying; no television an inconvenience; no telephone service is something of a blessing, for the most part. However, no air conditioning and no refrigeration is a health hazard.

Having already gone through two-plus days of no power while snowed in this past February, I think I've done my fair share of living the primative life for quite some time. Although I worried about freezing to death in February, at least I didn't have to throw away huge quantities of spoiled food.

One might reasonably conclude that the power company doesn't take adequate steps to prevent wide-scale outages.

With apologies to anyone who might be reading this who lives in a Third World country, I must say I'm pretty tired of dealing with a Third World power grid.

[Later: It could have been worse, I suppose. The power was restored - for the first time - around 3 a.m. Tuesday morning, which means about 36 hours all told. (It went out and back again two more times. I'm going to have to check whether my UPS has a way to disable the alarm.) Others are still out, so I thank my lucky stars to be among those with current. And I salute those men and women who are actually out there, day and night, futzing with high voltages to get my house back into the late 19th century. ]

4 comments:

Eladrienne Laval said...

Oh my!!! And I thought our 14 hours without power was bad! It is entirely too hot in this area to be without it, and I am glad that it was restored for you!

Aunt Foggy said...

Up here in Alaska it is understandable in midwinter, when the crews have to go trace miles and miles of line in deep snow and dark woods for the downed tree that has taken out a line.
Harder to fathom down there in "civilization"...

Rhianon Jameson said...

Thank you, Miss Laval, and my sympathies for your unpleasant experience as well. These things never seem to happen when the temperature is mild, do they?

Rhianon Jameson said...

I'm shivering just reading your words, Mrs. Volare. The thought of the power going out when it's well below freezing sounds downright dangerous! (You do have a backup source of heat, don't you?)

But I'm not certain how civilized it is around here. The number of people who interpret dark traffic lights as "Don't bother to slow down, just motor on through" is always eye-opening. :)