About twenty minutes ago, 6:25am Seattle time. Just CLICK! and all the lights are gone. My laptop is running on battery, and the phone line is still up. (Obviously, or I couldn’t be posting this.)
I went outside and walked up and down the block, looking for porch lights and whatever. Everything on our street is out. As I was walking back, a woman leaned out her window and said, “Hey, is your power out?” Yep, I confirmed. Brief banter. No obvious answers. I recommended she find a radio with a battery, and she looked at me like my shorts were full of brie. Are we really so chained to our outlets that nobody has anything without a cord any more? Am I the oddball for immediately knowing where I could find three battery-powered radios in my house?
Anyway, I’m listening to one of them now. (I got it out of our shower. It’s a waterproof model, in the form of a colorful plastic fish. Looks funny sitting on the side chair.) The local all-news station hasn’t mentioned the power outage, which leads me to conclude it’s just the neighborhood, and not a city-wide event.
So, not a big deal. Just a local annoyance; somebody probably hit a pole or dug through a cable. Still, on the heels of last week’s Northeast Surprise, it’s rather more disconcerting than mere inconvenience. And as long as I still have laptop battery and phone, and I can’t turn on the TV, I might as well post about it.
My parents were visiting a little while ago, and they don’t have a CD player in the house. My mom actually would go sit in the car to listen to CDs. I have them a little round boom box with radio, tape, and CD player so the neighbors would not be POSITIVE she was a loon, and then about a week ago we lost power for a few seconds at a time five times in 90 minutes, and I realized that was my battery powered radio I had given away. I was scoping them out in KMart just yesterday.
All of these power outage stories make me realize that I’m totally unprepared here. Last year we had ice storms and many places were without power for WEEKS, so I should know better. Thanks for the reminder and I hope your power comes back soon!
Our power went out during a storm last week. I was on the computer, hubby was watching tv and the friend was eating in the kitchen. It came back on within a few seconds. By the time I got rebooted, hubby got the cable box loaded and friend reset the microwave clock, it went out again. Very annoying. I reset my alarm clock, but forgot to reset the alarm time. I am such a snooze hound that I just realized yesterday that my alarm has been going off at midnight evey night. No wonder I haven’t slept well.