Blessed electricity

A couple of days ago we were without power for several hours. Again. Then, yesterday, the power company called and said there would be a crew coming to the neighborhood to excavate soil around the neighborhood’s transformer because the current one had leaked something. She said oil, but I presume it must be something slightly more toxic than oil. Dunno, though. In any case, the woman said the power would be turned off in the neighborhood for about 6 hours, starting at 8:00 AM. And so it was.

I believe the electric company must have brought every piece of heavy equipment they owned. There were dump trucks and back hoes and vans and pick up trucks and a flatbed truck, and vehicles with flashing lights. And generators and assorted other very loud machines. The entire house vibrated.

Well, six hours came and went. The power was still off, the hole in the ground kept getting bigger and more dump trucks arrived. Then trucks with landscaping plants arrived to replace the ones they had to yank out of the ground. It was quite an impressive operation for a “little oil”. The day grew long in the tooth and then dark. I lit a bunch of candles again.

Finally, the power came back on at 6:28 PM. I was so thrilled that I turned on every light and danced a jig. Being without power may have a certain romance to it, if it doesn’t happen a couple of times a week, but today was pushing the limits of my tolerance. There really is only so much a person can do without power these days. And by 6:00 I was in a most foul mood as, I’m sure, the rest of the neighbors were who came home to freezing cold houses—or worse, the ones who work from home and lost a day. At least I had heat.

The crews ended up putting in another brand new transformer. The one they put in a couple of weeks ago was defective. It was a major production. I surely hope this transformer lasts. In the last couple of weeks, we’ve had 19 hours of power outages and it’s wearing thin. I have a brand new appreciation for how dependent on electricity I am and how fractured daily life must be for people who have to go weeks or even months with spotty electricity (after an ice storm or in Baghdad, for example). It’s not fun.