Unlike a great many blog posts I've made, this one's title is literal.
Yesterday, frustrated that the power was still out, I navigated to the power company's web site, logged into my account, and accessed the page to check the status of the outage. Lots of outages, they said. Turns out they were working on mine that very minute, they said. The estimated time of restoration was a slot from noon to 6 pm yesterday, they said.
Like a fool, I believed them.
I finally got home from work at about 7 pm, giving them an hour (ish) leeway. It was dark still.
It's funny what the absence of power does. I've lived without it before. Up in Trapper Creek, we went nine months without power or running water. We had a telephone because the phone company pulled an orange cord from the TID (the box that they own at the street) to the house and left it hanging there. I used to say it was a booby-trap for the moose who ran through the yard. But we had no power, which meant no computers. That was actually kind of refreshing, because it was during the time in my life when most of my professional efforts centered around the lousy little metallic containers of circuitry and attitudes. As for the other benefits of modern electrical service, it's nice having a little switch on the wall to turn the lights on, but you can get used to the other way as well. It's a routine, really. Somebody, usually the husband, jumps out of bed and waddles to the stove to stoke it up a bit after lighting one of the lanterns. Fire blazing, he then careens back to the bed and leaps under the covers to warm his backside back up as the house itself begins to wake up.
Do that every day when it's a lifestyle you choose, it's not bad. Do that out of necessity because the power company can't get electrons to your house to make the clever little switches on the wall work, it's annoying. Have the power company be incorrect about when they'll get power back up, it's downright maddening.
Anyway, it looks from their site like the power is back up already; at least, when I go and check on a status, they tell me "You have to report an outage to get a status update" so either they fixed it and reset it, or they reset it without fixing it just to tick me off more. The exciting thing is that I'll be able to write again tonight if it's back on. Oh, and we'll have air conditioning once again. And TV, too--though it's too late to catch the new episode of Dr. Who.
All things considered, though, I'm really looking forward to having a powered home tonight.
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