Monday night
Feb. 17th, 2003 11:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
same_skyYou never really notice how important something is until it's gone. Electricity is a good example of this.
Saturday night, we were sitting at home. It had been sucky and rainy all day long, but life was pretty good regardless. Then the power suddenly went out at around 9:30. Things went downhill fairly rapidly from there.
See, the weather had turned very cold, and all that sucky rain turned to ice, and that ice toppled trees, and those trees landed on power lines. Everywhere. So when the power went off, it wasn't that big of a deal at first. We didn't really know about the trees yet, and assumed it'd be on at least by the morning. It started getting fairly cold in here, but after a while, we just went to bed and then we were rather warm. The next morning, of course, it was freezing in the house. Almost literally, actually.. it was 34 degrees when we got up. We spent the day at the parents house, waiting for the electric to come on. They lost their power too, of course, but they have a well-insulated house and a kerosene heater, so it was vastly preferable to staying at home. The day was pretty boring really. We do have two fish (Larry and Blackie), though, and they were suddenly without heat or air, so we had to keep coming to the house every few hours and blowing at them through a straw. I read somewhere to do that if the power goes off, and it really seemed to help.. they stopped gasping for air when we did it. "We're gonna go blow on the fish" is really one of those phrases that you don't hear every day, btw. If it had gotten much colder, though, they would have frozen, and no amount of blowing would help that.
My dad has been kind of enjoying the whole thing, actually. He's been coming up with all these ideas and then making them work. He's been cooking meals over the kerosene heaters, for example. Very slow meals. :) My uncle, who's out of town, had told him that he was welcome to borrow his generator if he wanted, and so after a while, he went to get it, so we had relatively good lighting and they could keep their fridge running. We had to have an ice cream party before he got back, though. Ever eat a melted Klondike? *laugh* Chunky chocolate milk. Anyway. When we left tonight, they were watching a movie. Things like that.
We were going to spend the night at the parents last night, and gathered all our stuff for it, but it turned out that all the rest of my family had that same idea, so we decided that it would be better for us to come home and sleep in a cold house than sleep on the floor in a warmer house full of people getting up to go to work at various times. It also helped that we acquired a kerosene heater of our own.. a friend of my dad lent it to him. So we got the house decently warm last night before bed, and my dad came down at around six this morning to light the heater for us and keep an eye on it for a while. (Isn't that sweet? He even blew on the fish!) So when we got up, it was around 62.. perfectly serviceable temperature, if not wonderfully warm and toasty.
By this morning, we were pretty cranky about the whole thing and desperately craving a shower. We went to the parents for lunch and then went to my grandparents in town to shower. After that, our moods improved drastically. We were bored and went to WalMart and Kroger, and then to eat. On the way home from dinner at around seven, we noticed that the lights were on but flickering, and then finally went out altogether. At around eight, we decide to come home and heat the house up before bed. We decided that the system was overloaded with everything coming on at once and they'd be turning things on gradually anyway. Not too long after that, a power truck pulls into our driveway and a couple of guys get out and go look at our pole. Magnus steps outside to talk to them and asks him how it's going and if they needed anything. The guy seemed very pleasantly surprised that he was being nice.. we suspect that people have been pretty impatient with them (which annoys me. It's not like it's their fault,and they've been working around the clock all weekend.) Anyway, the guy said that everything was going fine and made the following statement, "We're going to get you turned on pretty quick." There was a slight emphasis on the word "you" that we decided could have meant any number of things. We were bouncing around after that, looking out the window waiting for a sign. Turned out to be a good thing that we were, or we probably would have missed the light on our pole coming on. The power came back on at around 8:30, or just around 47 hours after it went off, with no flickering.
What's really weird is that we're the only people with power. After the initial flickering at seven, it all went off, then the lights came on on the other side of the road. Then we came home and the conversation with the power guy occured, and our power came on. It's now over two hours later and still no one else but us has power. See, we live in the middle of a trailer park. There's three rows on the left side and one row on the right. My parents live in a house in the middle of a large field, and we live at the bottom right corner of their lot. Anyway, the point is just that we can see most everyone from back here, and well, no one else has power, on either side. It's so weird! I can't help wondering if we would have power if we hadn't been nice to them. At the same time, surely they don't work that way.
On the other hand, as I sit here and stare out at a completely dark neighborhood.. I just can't help thinking that they do.
Saturday night, we were sitting at home. It had been sucky and rainy all day long, but life was pretty good regardless. Then the power suddenly went out at around 9:30. Things went downhill fairly rapidly from there.
See, the weather had turned very cold, and all that sucky rain turned to ice, and that ice toppled trees, and those trees landed on power lines. Everywhere. So when the power went off, it wasn't that big of a deal at first. We didn't really know about the trees yet, and assumed it'd be on at least by the morning. It started getting fairly cold in here, but after a while, we just went to bed and then we were rather warm. The next morning, of course, it was freezing in the house. Almost literally, actually.. it was 34 degrees when we got up. We spent the day at the parents house, waiting for the electric to come on. They lost their power too, of course, but they have a well-insulated house and a kerosene heater, so it was vastly preferable to staying at home. The day was pretty boring really. We do have two fish (Larry and Blackie), though, and they were suddenly without heat or air, so we had to keep coming to the house every few hours and blowing at them through a straw. I read somewhere to do that if the power goes off, and it really seemed to help.. they stopped gasping for air when we did it. "We're gonna go blow on the fish" is really one of those phrases that you don't hear every day, btw. If it had gotten much colder, though, they would have frozen, and no amount of blowing would help that.
My dad has been kind of enjoying the whole thing, actually. He's been coming up with all these ideas and then making them work. He's been cooking meals over the kerosene heaters, for example. Very slow meals. :) My uncle, who's out of town, had told him that he was welcome to borrow his generator if he wanted, and so after a while, he went to get it, so we had relatively good lighting and they could keep their fridge running. We had to have an ice cream party before he got back, though. Ever eat a melted Klondike? *laugh* Chunky chocolate milk. Anyway. When we left tonight, they were watching a movie. Things like that.
We were going to spend the night at the parents last night, and gathered all our stuff for it, but it turned out that all the rest of my family had that same idea, so we decided that it would be better for us to come home and sleep in a cold house than sleep on the floor in a warmer house full of people getting up to go to work at various times. It also helped that we acquired a kerosene heater of our own.. a friend of my dad lent it to him. So we got the house decently warm last night before bed, and my dad came down at around six this morning to light the heater for us and keep an eye on it for a while. (Isn't that sweet? He even blew on the fish!) So when we got up, it was around 62.. perfectly serviceable temperature, if not wonderfully warm and toasty.
By this morning, we were pretty cranky about the whole thing and desperately craving a shower. We went to the parents for lunch and then went to my grandparents in town to shower. After that, our moods improved drastically. We were bored and went to WalMart and Kroger, and then to eat. On the way home from dinner at around seven, we noticed that the lights were on but flickering, and then finally went out altogether. At around eight, we decide to come home and heat the house up before bed. We decided that the system was overloaded with everything coming on at once and they'd be turning things on gradually anyway. Not too long after that, a power truck pulls into our driveway and a couple of guys get out and go look at our pole. Magnus steps outside to talk to them and asks him how it's going and if they needed anything. The guy seemed very pleasantly surprised that he was being nice.. we suspect that people have been pretty impatient with them (which annoys me. It's not like it's their fault,and they've been working around the clock all weekend.) Anyway, the guy said that everything was going fine and made the following statement, "We're going to get you turned on pretty quick." There was a slight emphasis on the word "you" that we decided could have meant any number of things. We were bouncing around after that, looking out the window waiting for a sign. Turned out to be a good thing that we were, or we probably would have missed the light on our pole coming on. The power came back on at around 8:30, or just around 47 hours after it went off, with no flickering.
What's really weird is that we're the only people with power. After the initial flickering at seven, it all went off, then the lights came on on the other side of the road. Then we came home and the conversation with the power guy occured, and our power came on. It's now over two hours later and still no one else but us has power. See, we live in the middle of a trailer park. There's three rows on the left side and one row on the right. My parents live in a house in the middle of a large field, and we live at the bottom right corner of their lot. Anyway, the point is just that we can see most everyone from back here, and well, no one else has power, on either side. It's so weird! I can't help wondering if we would have power if we hadn't been nice to them. At the same time, surely they don't work that way.
On the other hand, as I sit here and stare out at a completely dark neighborhood.. I just can't help thinking that they do.
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no subject
Date: 2003-02-18 09:51 am (UTC)I'm not sure why we didn't think of it until just now, but what we should have been doing was scooping up a bunch of water from the tank and letting it trickle back down. Magnus is cleaning out the filters right now to remove toxins that apparently build up, and we need to watch them for a couple of days for disease from temperature changes. I think my parents were amused that we put so much effort into maintaining the life of two goldfish. ;)