Connection Interuptus!

I just spent a very long night here and morning too. In solitude, quiet, peacefulness too. It wasn't something I'd planned to do - far from it. But it was imposed on me by forces way beyond my control.

At about 1 a.m. this morning, I was seated in my normal pose at that hour of the day (night) - in front of the computer, eyes on the monitor, fingers on the keyboard. I was reading a post from Dr. Sardonicus in which he tagged me for this meme where I am supposed to go through my previous postings and select the three that I think are the best of the litter. Now there's a job and a half for me, without a doubt, ya know!

Well, as I was just ready to click over to my own archives and start searching, suddenly - without warning as there was no nasty weather or anything going on - the house went pitch black! Oh no, no power! Then the lights came back on for maybe five seconds at best and when they went back out, there was a boom - a HUGE BOOM - and I could have sworn it came right from my computer into the mouse in my hand!

Great! Just great! Here I am, already behind as all get out in things I should be doing, needing to use the computer big time to do this search for three decent posts and no electricity. What's more, all I could think then too was that I just knew that I had heard the innards of my poor little computer sizzling away with that boom as they were all being fried! Just knew it deep down in my heart, you see and man, was I scared then. Where the hell was I going to find the coinage to fix or get a new computer?

I called Penelec, the Electric company in our area and reported the outage. In the process, I even spoke to a rep to try to get a bead on what happened, what was taking place, etc. She told me crews were enroute to begin repairs and at that time, they were estimating it would be around 4 a.m. before they could get the outage repaired. Ok, I guess I can live with 3 hours of no electricty, can't I? Yeah, I did - somehow I survived.

But at 4 a.m. - no power back on. About 5 a.m. I got a "wakeup" call from the electric company to let me know it was almost 5 a.m. and the hour I'd requested they call back if the power was still out.

I called upstairs to awaken Kate - the 16-year-old - so she could try to get ready for school. She came stumbling down the stairs, looked around -rather dazed - and I asked her what she figured on doing now. Well, she thought she'd get a shower first, then dressed, etc. And I reminded her we have no hot water so if she was really into cold showers, then to go for it. (The house wasn't really cold, but it was a bit nippy.) Her reaction to that was "WHAT? No water?" Well, we do still have water, just not of the heated variety that one normally (most people anyway) prefer to have when they shower. I also reminded her with no power we have no stove to cook breakfast, no toaster, no lights above the mirror in the bathroom and also - horror of horrors - no hair dryer, no curling iron, no hair straightener. (That amazes me that she has to use a curling iron AND a hair straightener too - doesn't one defeat the purpose of the other there? But what do I know about those things anyway.) Well, upon hearing that announcement, she turned tail and head back upstairs and went back to bed. And about the same time, I decided to hit the couch too and catch a few z's myself.

About 8 a.m. I awoke - still no power. I woke Mandy up so she could get Maya ready to meet the school van and be whisked away for the day at her preschool program. Shortly after Maya left, Mandy headed up to the store in Kylertown to pick up a couple things and when she came home, she had a bit of the news then as to what had happened.

Seems some guy from a little village about 2 miles down the road from us had hit the electrical/telephone pole up on Route 53 in front of Jim & Charmaine's Restaurant - right by the turn in to Grassflat, which is where we live. Seems too that in hitting that pole, the truck knocked out the transformer and also, totally destroyed the marquee in front of the restaurant as well.

And, to make things all that much harder for me anyway, the news on how long they were anticipating it would take to restore power - probably not until this evening sometime!

Holy Buckets! What the heck am I gonna do? No power, means no coffee! I will surely wither up and die by this evening if that's the case! No power, no hot water, also no stove. No way to wash up the dirty dishes already accumulated last evening after supper. No stove to fix a meal this afternoon/evening for the son-in-law, Maya and me. (Mandy and Kate both have work tonight, so they can eat there.)

Finally, about noonish, I headed up to Kylertown to the store to get two large cups of coffee for Bill and for myself. At least try to stave off the headache sure to arrive from the first stages of caffeine withdrawal ya know. Mandy was already up at the shopping center doing laundry since otherwise she would lose a lot of valuable time and we'd really be way behind in the clean clothes department then. As I came out of the store with the coffee in hand, she came up to me and said Bill had just called her on her cell phone to say the power had just been restored! He had also told her it had knocked out five breakers in the house with the outage too. Wonderful. Probably not though, was my first thought about that aspect.

I headed home, down past Jim & Charmaine's and stopped there -camera in hand - to take some pictures of the workers putting up the new pole, finishing up getting all the wires reconnected, etc. And in the process, I was talking to one of the young women (lineperson) who works for Penelec. She told me the name of the guy who had managed to hit the pole and marquee - added too that he was extremely lucky in that he was able to get out and WALK AWAY from the accident. He not only was not injured but he also tried to WALK AWAY - or run away I should say I suppose - from the scene.

Hmmmm. I asked the question of the day - "Was he perhaps a bit 'tipsy?" Oh yes indeed! Even had the can of beer on the seat of the truck. Wonderful for him, isn't that?

She then went on to give me more details on what had happened. He'd veered off the road a few hundred feet up from the restaurant and had "ridden" the guardrails for a good piece before he drove into the grassy area in front of the restaurant and then, just sort of "drifted" into the pole and the marquee. She said there was a huge imprint in the windshield of the truck where his head had hit and the steering column was completely ripped away from the impact. How he did that and had no injuries to himself was beyond belief! Just sheer luck, I suppose.

Her impression of the whole thing though? She thinks he's gonna be a bit poor in the pocketbook for a long, long time to come! Oh, you betcha!

Well, I got home and first thing I did after I recovered from the shock of my rotten son-in-law telling me the computer was completely and totally fried, deader than a doornail, wouldn't even muster an attempt to come on if you tried it. I pushed the on button, saw it slowly loading windows on the monitor and then, all set up for me, I clicked into my connect button and waited to see if the modem had died.

You can't imagine the immense relief flooding my old body as I saw it CONNECT! Yes, yes, yes! Oh man, was I ever singing the "doyay, doyay!" Big time, for sure!

So now, that's my excuse for being late starting to read blogs, checking e-mail all those sorts of things I normally do every day.

But the good news is this - operating by the light of 5 candles on my desk (of various sizes and scents) I managed to finish knitting one scarf I've been working on; got 10 more rows knitted up on yet another scarf project and even started to read the book my daughter (Carrie) gave me for my birthday too - "Nineteen Minutes" by my favorite author, Jodi Picoult.

So I guess it wasn't a totally wasted time with the power outage then after all was it? Maybe just contributed to my going blind a little faster but what the heck is that when your vision is already 200/20 in both eyes to start with!

So far, not only did the computer check out ok, so did all five tv sets in the house, the stove is fine, refrigerator and freezer both appear to be ok too.

So, overall, it's all good!