unplanned adventure
Jan. 21st, 2015 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aryanhwyYesterday walking up the hill home, I noticed some of the street lights were out. "Huh, that's interesting", I thought, and gave it no more mind. We turned onto our street, and all the lights there were also out, which I figured was connected. But it wasn't until I opened our door and flipped the switch...and flipped it again and a third time, that I realized the power was out.
I can't remember the last time that I dealt with a non-self-inflicted power outage (self-inflicted ones are generally easy to deal with, once you find the right fuse in the fuse box). My first thought was, of course, to post about it on FB via my phone. I did this partly because of the novelty and to engender expressions of surprise in my friends, but also because if there were some sort of website that you could check to either report a power outage or view the status of a known outage, someone viewing my status would know what that site was and that would be the fasted way to find it. And it was. In about 3 minutes, I'd been PMed the relevant link and found that the power outage had been reported around 11:30am, and that it was estimated to be fixed by 11:30pm.
The next thing I did was collect candles. Thankfully, our lighter, which needs to be refilled or replaced, still had enough juice in it left to light one candle, and then I could use toothpicks to light the others. Thankfully also, Gwen thinks candles are cool, and while she was a bit confused about the light in her room not turning on when she pulled the cord, she didn't find the situation that upsetting. That is...until I explained to her that without electricity, I wasn't going to be able to get the stove on (we have a gas stove, but it would need to be manually light, and frankly, I was not interested in putting a flaming wooden toothpick and my fingers that close to the burners not really knowing yet how quickly the gas comes out before I could get it ignited. I also figured the less we dug into the fridge, the better), and thus we weren't going to be having lentil soup for supper as I'd promised. Instead, I told Gwen, we were going to order a pizza for delivery (I'd been planning to do pizza delivery at least one night during this 2 week period that Joel is gone, just hadn't figured it would be so soon!)
She looks at me in consternation, and stamps her foot angrily. "But I don't want pizza! I want lentil soup!"
--
Thankfully, by the time it came, she'd changed her mind, and thought it was tasty. And then we brought some candles up to her room to read before bed, and I made sure she had extra blankets, because the temp. indoors was steadily dropping. I bundled up and crawled into bed directly after, and of course Widget soon came and found me. Between candles, the light of my laptop, and, later, the flashlight app on my phone, I still managed to get some things that I'd planned to do that evening done (though nowhere near all). Because the wireless router was down, I had to use my phone as a tether for my laptop, which meant that the phone battery charged while the laptop battery drained, but thankfully the laptop has a pretty long battery life still, because it's so new. It was just a little bit remarkable on the one hand how disruptive this was -- had to change my plans for dinner, didn't get any dishes washed, didn't start a new load of laundry, or hang up the one that's been on the rack for a few days -- but on the other hand how little disruptive it was -- thanks to the magic of wireless/mobile internet and long-lasting batteries, I had light, heat, and the ability to do what I usually spend my nights doing. Though when it hit about 12.5 C (= 54.5 F) I decided that was cold enough, and went to bed. Thankfully, the electricity did come on again at some point overnight, and by morning the house was warm again.
I can't remember the last time that I dealt with a non-self-inflicted power outage (self-inflicted ones are generally easy to deal with, once you find the right fuse in the fuse box). My first thought was, of course, to post about it on FB via my phone. I did this partly because of the novelty and to engender expressions of surprise in my friends, but also because if there were some sort of website that you could check to either report a power outage or view the status of a known outage, someone viewing my status would know what that site was and that would be the fasted way to find it. And it was. In about 3 minutes, I'd been PMed the relevant link and found that the power outage had been reported around 11:30am, and that it was estimated to be fixed by 11:30pm.
The next thing I did was collect candles. Thankfully, our lighter, which needs to be refilled or replaced, still had enough juice in it left to light one candle, and then I could use toothpicks to light the others. Thankfully also, Gwen thinks candles are cool, and while she was a bit confused about the light in her room not turning on when she pulled the cord, she didn't find the situation that upsetting. That is...until I explained to her that without electricity, I wasn't going to be able to get the stove on (we have a gas stove, but it would need to be manually light, and frankly, I was not interested in putting a flaming wooden toothpick and my fingers that close to the burners not really knowing yet how quickly the gas comes out before I could get it ignited. I also figured the less we dug into the fridge, the better), and thus we weren't going to be having lentil soup for supper as I'd promised. Instead, I told Gwen, we were going to order a pizza for delivery (I'd been planning to do pizza delivery at least one night during this 2 week period that Joel is gone, just hadn't figured it would be so soon!)
She looks at me in consternation, and stamps her foot angrily. "But I don't want pizza! I want lentil soup!"
--
Thankfully, by the time it came, she'd changed her mind, and thought it was tasty. And then we brought some candles up to her room to read before bed, and I made sure she had extra blankets, because the temp. indoors was steadily dropping. I bundled up and crawled into bed directly after, and of course Widget soon came and found me. Between candles, the light of my laptop, and, later, the flashlight app on my phone, I still managed to get some things that I'd planned to do that evening done (though nowhere near all). Because the wireless router was down, I had to use my phone as a tether for my laptop, which meant that the phone battery charged while the laptop battery drained, but thankfully the laptop has a pretty long battery life still, because it's so new. It was just a little bit remarkable on the one hand how disruptive this was -- had to change my plans for dinner, didn't get any dishes washed, didn't start a new load of laundry, or hang up the one that's been on the rack for a few days -- but on the other hand how little disruptive it was -- thanks to the magic of wireless/mobile internet and long-lasting batteries, I had light, heat, and the ability to do what I usually spend my nights doing. Though when it hit about 12.5 C (= 54.5 F) I decided that was cold enough, and went to bed. Thankfully, the electricity did come on again at some point overnight, and by morning the house was warm again.
