Last night just as I was about to change to bike home Debbi texts me: “We just lost power.”
Our neighbors say that our neighborhood loses power a couple of times per year, which has been about right for the three years we’ve been here. (By contrast, our old home, only half a mile away, lost power less than once per year.) Twice a year seems like a lot, and I guess it is, but wen they first told us this I figured it was because of the aging infrastructure of the neighborhood (most houses here were built in the 50s), but actually if we learn the reason it’s usually a different reason each time.
This time it was a power cable falling (for reasons unknown) and hitting a tree. I guess we’re lucky it didn’t start a fire, but it just blew out the power for a long, narrow strip of homes.
Oh, and did I mention that yesterday marked the start of a heat wave? So it was north of 80°F when I got home, and stayed pretty warm into the night. (It’s even hotter today.) So, no A/C last night. actually it was pretty reasonable inside the house when I got home (yay insulation!), but upstairs was still warm and made sleeping a bit uncomfortable for a bit.
Anyway, the outage torpedoed our dinner plans, so instead we were bad (very very bad) and went to the Creamery for dinner. By the time we got home, the estimated repair time had moved from 8:45ish to 11:50ish. And PG&E trucks were driving up and down our street looking at wires and poles with spotlights. So we lit some candles, took out the trash, tidied up downstairs, and went up to bed where Debbi zonked out and I read (and played iOS games) until I joined her around 10:30. (And yes, I blew out the candles first.)
Oh, we got some use out of the tea light lantern that Debbi bought me a few years ago:
The power did indeed come on around midnight, because our bedroom fan came on. So I got up and went downstairs, and found that the television had come on too. So I turned it off, prepared the coffee maker for Debbi for when she got up, and went back to bed.
The cats, by the way, found all of this incredibly confusing.
Today I worked from home (which I’ve started doing once a week and which is an experience worth its own entry sometime), and was very happy the power was back so I could have the A/C on. Not to mention power for our internet and my laptop. But mostly the A/C.