The indignity of Modern Convenience Failure

We had a power outage yesterday at 6:02 PM, etched in my memory due to the need to reset a million things in our home. Apparently a car vs light pole and the light pole lost. I called our local utility and was informed that I and 110 other home owners were in the dark and would be for "an hour... or so".

Now of course we are total electric and I was thankful we went to great expense to totally insulate our house but it was 17 degrees outside so I hoped it was "Just" an hour and NOT the "or so". Being the Holidays I already had some candles around so I went from room to room lighting them. I also has a box of LED battery powered spots that are used for temporary point of use lighting in a closets and such that I brought out and sat around the house. Of course I had to go to the basement to pull the annoying beep of the alarm battery backup warning.

Greg suggested we go out to the carriage house and get the generators out. Were this a 'long term' situation like an ice storm I would have considered that option but since this was likely a temporary situation I decided it was more "bother than worth" to fire up the generator, but it was comforting to know I had that option. Joys of being in the construction field to have a 6000 watt generator handy.

Naturally this power outage was confined to "our side" of the street and I could see the light of my neighbors across the street lit for the Holidays, blissfully unaware of our predicament. However I didn't mind, the house looked beautiful lit by candlelight. Of course my cell phone rang as neighbors on our side of the street called to ask "Is your power off? Our power is off". I relayed the info that I heard from the Utility company that this was a temporary thing and power would be back on shortly. I realized that some of my neighbors, the ones with teenage children must be in panic mode as teenagers with no Nintendo, computers or stereos must be like crack addicts without a fix.

As for us, I amused myself by playing our old Estey Pump Organ and I realized that the Victorians really didn't have it so bad and they didn't have to worry about the "indignity of Modern Convenience Failure" because , well, they didn't have any.

At 6:53 the Power returned and of course I spent the next hour resetting clocks and timers.