Boom Boom Out Go the Lights

A nod to Pat Travers in the title. Hat tip to slightly obscure rock music from the late 70’s.

Anyway, I was watching the football game last night when all of a sudden, everything went dark. Of course, in the IPhone era, this wasn’t a problem since there is the handy flashlight feature (that sometimes comes on for no good reason but that’s another story). Used that to get to the cabinet where we keep the various other flashlights and light emitting things.

First thing to do was to report it. Well really to check on the outage map to make sure it was a real thing and not that I had just neglected to pay the power bill (kidding). In the days before cellular, you could do this on a land line but that would require remembering the power company phone number and who does that. Now, it was as easy as calling up the website and entering my address

Probably should also point out that it is a good thing we have unlimited data on the phones since the power meant no WiFi. Got a text from the cable company saying that they were aware of the outage and expected to have it fixed in about an hour. Not sure how that works since the outage was due to power being out. Do they have some kind of instant connection to the power company? Would like to know.

While doing all of this, I did have to deal with the constant beeping from the backup battery attached to our sump pump. A sump pump is one of those things that never ranks high on the list of home ownership plusses. Just another thing you need and have to worry about breaking at the wrong time. So there was a trip to the basement to remember how to silence the various alarms.

Then you have the decision on how much to use your phone since it is now the only lifeline to the outside world and the best source of entertainment. But if you run the battery down, you can’t charge it back up since there is no power. (Not really because we do have battery packs for that purpose but they are too slow to be practical).

So, it was just checking the outage map from time to time to see how many people were impacted and then waiting. The good news is that it was off for less than an hour. I guess a branch landed on a power line and knocked things out. Then it was just a matter of resetting the various clocks in the appliances.

Every power outage just reinforces two things. First, we’ve really become really dependent on electricity and we probably take it for granted. Second, the people who go out and fix power lines are really underrated. Happy they were able to get out in the cold and dark and get things up and running again.