Yesterday I wrote about the many clocks in the house and our short power loss. I wonder, was this a premonition?
I was getting things put away for the evening. It was almost 11PM and I was thinking I would find a movie On Demand. Just as I sat down and picked up the remote the lights began to "flash." Oh boy, I thought, we are going to lose power. Actually it was not Oh Boy, it was Oh Hell, but we didn't lose power, the microwave clock went off, the cable box went off but the TV flashed on and off, the sound making a "popping" noise. remembering the Dell lap top was still plugged in I went over to the table, pulled the plug and noticed we still had a wireless connection.
This was very strange. Some things were off, others on, and a number of things we sort of on, and sort of off. The LED night light was very dim as were the outdoor low voltage lights.The street light looked like they were on half power. The phones didn't work, a result of VOIP and cordless phones but we still had the wireless Internet connection.. I went ahead, while I still could, and pulled up the PG&E outage report.
I was astonished, a guesstimate is fifty different outages. They ranged from 1 to 50 customers with a few flags for 500 customers. I saw nothing listed for our street, zip code, or city. Guess I was too early. I got the cell phone and called, the recorded message told me they were, 1. aware of the problem 2. working on the problem 3. sorry about the problem and finally 4. should have the problem resolved by 1AM..if not they would have an updated message.
Over the course of the next two hours I paced the floor, ate some graham crackers, paced some more, ate some Hershey Kisses (milk chocolate and peppermint). I took a short nap, tried to connect to the Internet as we lost that connection and flipped on a lot of light switches. Every time I went into a different room I reached for the switch. At one point I noticed my cell phone battery was low. I took out the charger and was just about to plug it in when I remembered that wouldn't work.
At 1AM I called again. This time we were moved to 2:30AM. Same story, repaired or new message, etc. etc. Now I had a few candles and flashlights out but was still trying the light switches. Just about 1:45AM Wanda's cell started ringing. I grabbed her purse, rummaged around in it for what seemed like a long time, finally found the phone, opened it and said, "Hello," which I thought was a good way to start. It was our home alarm company.
Now, maybe I am the strange one? I hope those of you that manage to get through this have some idea of why this was necessary because I don't. I guess I should have asked while they were on the phone this morning? The nice lady that was sitting in front of a monitor somewhere in southern California said, "hello, is this Mr. Shulak?" I was pretty sure I was and said so. "this is your alarm company central station," she said and then, "I see you are having a power failure and am calling to let you know your back up battery is working fine."
NO SHIT..
If our back up battery was not working fine a horn loud enough to hear in south Florida would be blaring at us. The horn is so loud and shrill if you get close it will knock you to the floor. Ear plugs and cotton stuffed in your ears would be useless against the power of the screeching siren.The cats hate this so much they would be hanging from the rafters in the garage. The most expensive noise cancelling Bose head phones would fall off your ears and surrender to the power of this warning horn. This thing is LOUD.
At 3AM I called PG&E again. This call wasn't any better. Now they were saying 5AM. It was very strange looking out our back window and seeing all the lights on one block over. To the north, lights. To the south, no lights.
Our local Starbucks opened at 4:30AM. I wanted something warm, I wanted some coffee, I wanted to get out of the house. I grabbed a hat, a sweatshirt, and some gloves, it was just like Michigan, jumped in the car and drove down to the coffee shop.
No customers, three people working, 4:40AM in Starbucks. I have my new cup and my Gold Card and I order, "A grande non fat vanilla latte please," I said. A minute or so later my order was ready and I picked up a, grande non fat latte. OK, I realize in the grand (or grande) scheme of things a screwed up coffee order is pretty low on the totem pole of "things to get upset about" but how difficult is it to remember an order for seventeen seconds? Milk, espresso, vanilla, only three things and she forgot one of them. I gave them back the drink, I was nice, they made It right and I took off for home.
On the way back to the house I drove by a PG&E, just thought of something. In case you are not familiar with the initials. Wanda calls them Pigs, Goats, and Elephants. Really, it's Pacific Gas and Electric.I pulled over and stopped. One of the crew came over to the car and said, "should be back on real soon." I figured by the time I drove the next six blocks, pulled in the driveway, and got in the house our power would be restored. It wasn't.
On or about 5:30AM they were telling us 10. Wanda needed to go in this morning, better late than never. She figured the shower would be OK even if it was 58 in the house. The air temp may have been 58 but the water was colder. She called Jenn, got her things together and went over there to get ready for work.
When Wanda took off I left for the coffee shop downtown. We have an independent store in our revitalized downtown Main St. It's in an old, large, what once was a bank building. The interior was basically split in half, the Steeltown Coffee Shop and a Mechanics Bank sharing the space. It's very cool, good coffee and free Wi Fi. So, here I sit.
Wanda got to work fine. Since today is Trash Day Thursday it's her Friday. She called me a few minutes ago. The latest from PG&E is now 12:30PM. I hope they get our power back on before 2011, it's just around the corner which is also where the electricity is and where the workers aren't.
HELP ME.
I left Steeltown around 11:30AM stopped at the bakery down the street. It's OK since I figured I had at least an hour at home before I could cook breakfast. Hey, now I realized I could have opened the fridge, got some milk, and had some cereal, oh well. No, the calories don't count as it was an emergency bear claw. I got home, pet the cat, cleaned the kitchen counter, ate the pastry and took a nap.
I woke in the recliner, sweatshirt, hat, and gloves on with a cat on my lap. The extra clothes were the only thing on inside the house. It was now after 12:30PM and I was officially pissed off. I called the PG&E "outrage" line, again. Now our estimated time of recovery is 2:00PM.
I took another nap, for about an hour.
When I woke this time I kept my eyes shut, tight. I repeated, "I do believe in power, I do believe in power, I do believe in power" three times. By the way, you always need to repeat things like that in three's. I opened my eyes and lo and behold, no power. Now I was officially really pissed. It was 2:05PM. I took the cat off my lap reached for my cell phone to call the "outage" line once again and the phone was DEAD. OK, now I am walking around in little circles (I told you the house was small) thinking about throwing the phone against the wall. I have no power, no football, the bowl games are on all day today. No coffee, no cell phone, no heat, and no home phone. Comcast lines do not work when the power is out.
Suddenly I remembered, we happen to have a single phone on a line dedicated to our home alarm. It's a regular phone with metered calling but I can use it to call the PG&E "outage" line. Now the recorded message tells me a crew is on site and the power will be restored at 3PM.
There must be a better way to get information from PG&E. If they told me at 11PM last night it would be over twelve hours, maybe we would have gone to a motel. I doubt it but we may have done something beside stay at home, be cold, and call them every two hours.
I decide I will talk to a real person. I call the main number, press the 0 key repeatedly until I hear I am going to "talk to an operator and have the call recorded." They probably just say you'll be recorded so you don't swear at them. A nice man answers the phone, I tell him my story and ask for some better information, please.
The nice man asks me lots of questions. What is my name? What is a good number to reach you? I tell him there isn't one since I don't want them calling me back, I want the information NOW. What's the closest cross street? If they need to come to the house do we have any dogs? DOGS? COME TO THE HOUSE? The whole neighborhood is out and they are going to visit me? Finally, he puts me on hold. When the nice man gets back on the line he says, "There is a crew on site now. The power should be restored at 3PM."
Now I am vibrating. Why did I bother to call? I told the not so nice man all I wanted was a reasonable estimate. I would rather hear tomorrow now than tomorrow in two hour increments. I guess 3PM was all I was going to get so I grabbed the dead phone and the charger. I grabbed the Acer and the charger and drove back up to the Steeltown Coffee Shop.
What do you know, there are two PG&E crews just outside the coffee shop. One of the guys told me he was "on site" at 2AM. "They had to call in Hazmat to clean out a hole and then put in a new transformer," he said. "So, what can I expect?" I asked. He then said, "Should be on now." "Well it's not," I added, "I just came from there." Then he said, "Should be on by 3PM." Do they all go to the same school?
It's now 2:50 and here I sit. I wonder what I will find when I get home after 3PM? Any bets?
Hey, a new "she said" he heard" My cousin Lynne called yesterday afternoon. Among the several things we talked about was difficulty hearing dialogue in the movie theater. She told me about headphones for the "hearing impaired." You don't need to pass (or fail) a test, just ask for them at the concession area. I guess you can get them with, or without butter like goop. I said I was going to try them the next time we go to a movie since I miss so much now. We then talked about Netflix and other entertainment wrapping the conversation with her telling me they were going to go see, "The King's Feet." that night. After we hung up I checked out Rotten Tomatoes for that film and discovered it was, "The Kings Speech." I wonder, can I take the movie headphones home?
.................and now, the rest of the story.
I packed up my things, left the coffee shop around 3:45PM. Just before I got to the car I gave Wanda a call. She recently called the "Ya it's still outage line" to find out we didn't have nor would have power until 4:30PM. I am sorry to say I bit her head off. I am so sorry I got shitty with the messenger. I have no excuse, but, I was just a tad on edge.
I called them again to vent at a live person, did so and felt a little better. It was still 58 in the house so I bundled up got Casper my lap cat and took another nap. I woke at 5:15PM to a house full of electricity. Whoopee, I turned up the heat, reset the clocks and picked up our phone messages.
Two of the phone messages were from PG&E. The first at 4:30PM telling us we wouldn't have power until at least 5:30PM. The second message at 5:10PM telling us we would have restored power at 5:15PM, and, if not, we should stay on the line to speak with a representative. Funny, if we didn't have power we couldn't use the telephone so, exactly how did they expect us to, get the message and talk to them about the message we didn't get?
Got it? We finally did
This was an interesting eighteen hours. We didn't have electric power. We weren't able to cook, watch TV, use the phone or the computer. The house was chilly and somewhat dark. I couldn't make coffee. We did have a roof over our heads, food in the fridge, a car full of gas and money in the bank. All in all, it really wasn't much of a sacrifice, just a speed bump in the highway of life.
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