More Off Than On

The Power Company did say that, due to the fire danger imposed by heavy winds, we should expect power outages off/on.

They did not say it would be more off than on.

We had that outage on Tuesday that sent me down to the Community Room for respite. Power was restored in the late afternoon, long enough to power up the cellphone, little portable power station and post about the vision boards.

It was just seconds after posting that everything went dark. So, dark that I couldn’t see my hands in front of my face.

It pays to be organized.

I knew exactly where the matches were located, carefully felt my way through the dark to the drawer, struck a match to light my way to the candles.

I decided to sacrifice Tiger Joe.

So, between Joe Exotica, and the flashlight I dug out of its drawer, I made it through the night.

I awoke the next morning, Wednesday, to still no power and a message from Trainer that the studio, and the entire mini mall was shut down due to lack of power.

As the day went on, I learned every apartment building, shop, store, business in a three-mile area, was closed due to the outage.

Street lights were out and even the market was shut down that first day, as was the gas station, but both were up and running the next day.

The guy at the market, I later spoke to, said something about they got a generator or the generator kicked in. I’m not sure which.

So long story short, we’ve been without power since Tuesday.

Fortunately, I have a gas stove. The oven was inoperable but I was able to get fire from the burners with a match — make coffee with my 20+ years old percolator.

Again, it pays to be organized. I knew exactly where it was.

I also managed to survive by making soup, oatmeal, eggs ……… That is until the eggs went bad and had to be tossed, along with a lot of other product.

Speaking of eggs, make it make sense that I paid $9 for a dozen Eggland’s Best at the market, but a carton of eighteen organics at Sprouts went for $6.10.

No matter, half of the Eggland’s and all eighteen Sprouts had to be tossed because they were not safe to eat with no refrigeration for days.

The outage wasn’t all bad, as Friday’s bingo got cancelled, and there was enough sunlight streaming in during the day that I was able to work on that never ending needlepoint project.

When the light dimmed, I used a booklight to get some reading done, and I was able to entertain myself late night by watching TikTok on the cellphone — sound silenced with Beats by Dr. Dre Bluetooth earbuds so as not to disturb my downstairs neighbor.

The worst was all the product from the fridge I had to toss, no garbage disposal, no paper shredder, no vacuum, too cold and windy to put in any walking miles.

We received notice power would not be restored until Monday …… something about having to check every wire.

I emailed back, "Check faster".

The powers that be must have heard me, because power restored, and I’m back online as of 3:30 this afternoon, blogging and furiously charging everything that needs to be charged just in case we’re off again.

All in all, it was an interesting adventure and good practice for when you know who starts a war with Greenland or Canada or Panama or Mexico, or all four, and the power grid is attacked/gets taken out, resulting in no power for any of us in the Americas.