December 15, 2000
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Power
Greetings from my friend Wendy's house. As I write this, two of the family dogs are paying careful attention, making sure I am not trying to do anything fun without petting them. And Aunt Becky wouldn't do any such thing. The other two dogs know me better, so they're just watching from a distance.
I am staying here for the night thanks to a power outage. Some charming soul in a backhoe didn't call before he dug. He sliced through a major transmission line between my town and the town just east of us, killing all the power. And he managed to do this just before suppertime. Mine was already ready, but I suspect there are a lot of half-cooked meals on stoves all over the area...the power company's report line put up a recorded message saying that 5,100 customers were without power at that time. It turns out there were closer to 35,000 for at least part of the outage, according to a local television station's website.
Wendy and her husband live west of town, and had power. She called me about 9:30 to see if mine had been restored (it hadn't) and to offer me a place to spend the night. She came to get me (I don't drive at night, as a rule), and I've been here a couple of hours.
The first few minutes of the outage were okay. I got out some candles, and looked out to see if the whole complex was affected---it was. But after an hour or so, it got tiresome. As the evening wore on, and the potential for the outage to last all night came closer to reality, I called a friend who works for the power company in another part of the state to ask him if he knew anything about our situation. He didn't, but made sure I had called the company to report (I had).The excitement for the evening was when someone knocked on my door. I asked who it was, and his response was, "Open the door."
I didn't recognize the voice, and in any case, I don't take orders in my own home, so my response to that was, "No!" I stood near the door for a few moments, waiting to see if he would knock again, or say something else. He did neither, so I'm thinking it was probably someone who got terribly confused in the dark and was at the wrong apartment.
Since I've been at the computer, I've sent e-mail to a couple of friends who might be wondering if I was all right, and I've had an IM session with TeKay. In between playing with the dogs, of course. I forgot to tell you the household also includes two cats, who know me quite well---I'm the kitty sitter when the humans are out of town. One cat paid me the honor of curling up in my lap for a while. He's now asleep on the sofa, while the other kitty is on another chair.
And Aunt Becky is about to head to the shower.