December 2002

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Greetings from Camp Law Firm!

There has been no power in my apartment since about 5:30 a.m. Thursday. Duke Power, which serves my part of the state, says it might be Wednesday before service is restored to 90 percent of their customers. Damned if I know what they plan to do for the other 10 percent, or whether I'm in the lucky 90. More on Duke Power later.

Anyway, I happened to be awake when the power went off Thursday morning. I rounded up some candles and went back to sleep, figuring things would be back to normal as soon as the errant branch of whatever tree was removed from the power line. (Umm, nope!)

After I got up for keeps, I realized that the freezing rain was still coming down, and from what I could find out by listening to my battery-operated radio there was no telling when we'd have power. The joke of the day Thursday? A peddler called. I could hear the bullpen in the background, so when she asked to speak to "Rebecca," and didn't put a last name to it, I told her I was terribly sorry but she had the wrong number.

I spent the sunny parts of yesterday and today working on the repair job I mentioned Wednesday. And I had plenty of clothes and candles and flashlights and food.

So why am I writing from the law firm? Well, it's in the part of the service area that has had power restored. About 8:00 tonight, Wendy called to say that she and her husband and their four dogs were here, and would I like to join them for the campout? I hadn't planned on leaving my apartment, but heat and hot coffee sounded good to me, so Wendy came to rescue me.

This has, of course, given me a chance to meet the newest canine in the family, Lacey. She had to sniff me a couple of times before she decided that it was okay for her to let me pet her, but since then, she has decided I'm totally okay. I've had several Lacey-kisses over the course of being here. Bless her heart, though, she's not quite sure what is going on and why any of us are here. Zoe, trooper that she is, has come to spend some minutes with me, but mainly she's curled up under the credenza in Wendy's office. Pippin and Kobe are wandering around the joint, supervising the various and sundry humans.

I've spent most of my time here answering e-mail from friends and family wondering how I was doing, and posting to a couple of message boards. After I was through with that, I took advantage of the fact there was hot water and bathed. Yes, folks, for the first time, Becky was naked at the law firm. (Can you just see the search engine hits on that phrase?) Not to worry, I put my clothes on before appearing to anyone except myself.

Okay, back to Duke Power. The man who has been serving as spokesman for them is a complete twit. This observation from me follows his having stated that this outage (which covers the majority of their service areas in North Carolina, and a good bit of South Carolina as well) was much worse than the one they experienced after Hurricane Hugo. This is his response every time a reporter asks for an estimate on when service will be restored. Well, twit, let's get our facts in order here. Fact one is that Hugo happened in September 1989. While it did cut a swath across both states, it did so at a time when the weather was not below freeziing. And that leads to fact two, which is that this ice storm has covered much more of the area of the states. It is, however, true, that this storm has caused more damage than Hurricanes Fran and Hugo combined, in terms of manpower needs. Just make the point right, twit.

There has been some grumbling as to whether the headquarters area (Charlotte) was going to get power restored before the other locales. In fact, the mayor of Greensboro interrupted a Duke Power news conference held in his city to basically ask just that. The answer was that all areas are being treated equally. I try hard not to be a skeptic, but this time, even I am finding the urge to say "Yeah, right!" to that statement to be very strong.

Of course, the company may have to contend with the Wendy-magic. See, the last time Duke Power wasn't sure when I'd have power again on a cold December night, Wendy rescued me (prior to having a journal, which is why there's no link to her in that entry), and not too long afterwards the power was restored in to the rest of my neighborhood. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's power in my neighborhood tomorrow.

If not, I understand Camp Law Firm will remain in business for the duration. And I am extremely grateful that's the case.