Powerless
*edit: It wasn't until after posting this entry that I realized I titled my post exactly the same as Plonq's post about the same event. oops!
You know, for supposedly living in a first-world country, our power goes out a lot.
On Sunday, after church and running some errands, we came home to discover this had happened behind our house.
The weather had been very blustery, so the tree's collapse was not wholly unexpected. (I am, again, grateful that it wasn't the elm in our front yard falling on our computer room.) I called Hydro to report the situation, and was told that someone else had called it in as well. Cool! I went inside and continued my day.
Laundry. Putzing around the house. Dinner. All of this went off without a hitch, until about 9pm when the power failed. plonq went outside to investigate and discovered Hydro crews working in the alley. He also talked to our neighbour, who had been without power since the tree came down around 2pm. (!!) Apparently he'd called 911 when the tree caught on fire and started arcing and sparking (!!) around the time I was cooking dinner, but we didn't hear a thing. The fire department put out the fire and put in another call to Hydro, who finally showed up.
I brushed my teeth and made other "getting ready for bed" actions, killing time until the power was restored. Time crept by. Around 10:30pm, when I would usually be in bed, I heard the chainsaw start up. I glanced out and saw the had the lines totally down, and were working on getting the tree off the wires. Surmising it would be a while, and knowing that when the power came back on every electronic device would roar to life with a bleep and a flash of light, I crawled into bed.
I didn't sleep well, since I was keeping a half ear open for the power coming back on so I could reset my alarm clock. (My phone was on fumes by then, and I worried that it would die completely if I tried to use it as an alarm.) At about 1:15am, my fitful sleep was interrupted by the air conditioner coming on and a radio in the next room talking at us. Plonq and I ran around turning off some lights before going back to bed.
I still didn't sleep well. The book I'd been reading ( Station 11) had been on my mind a lot, and before the power went out I'd been cruising through back entries of Stand Still, Stay Silent, a great web comic with a post-apocalyptic plot. Those two things, plus the power being out, gave me weird, fucked up dreams about surviving past the end of the world. Monday was not a Good Day.
By the way, I finished Station 11 last night. It was good! Better than I thought it would be. It's totally set up for a sequel, but I feel like the author explored all she could about the main characters' lives before the plague, so the next book (if there is one) would have to be different in style.
You know, for supposedly living in a first-world country, our power goes out a lot.
On Sunday, after church and running some errands, we came home to discover this had happened behind our house.
The weather had been very blustery, so the tree's collapse was not wholly unexpected. (I am, again, grateful that it wasn't the elm in our front yard falling on our computer room.) I called Hydro to report the situation, and was told that someone else had called it in as well. Cool! I went inside and continued my day.
Laundry. Putzing around the house. Dinner. All of this went off without a hitch, until about 9pm when the power failed. plonq went outside to investigate and discovered Hydro crews working in the alley. He also talked to our neighbour, who had been without power since the tree came down around 2pm. (!!) Apparently he'd called 911 when the tree caught on fire and started arcing and sparking (!!) around the time I was cooking dinner, but we didn't hear a thing. The fire department put out the fire and put in another call to Hydro, who finally showed up.
I brushed my teeth and made other "getting ready for bed" actions, killing time until the power was restored. Time crept by. Around 10:30pm, when I would usually be in bed, I heard the chainsaw start up. I glanced out and saw the had the lines totally down, and were working on getting the tree off the wires. Surmising it would be a while, and knowing that when the power came back on every electronic device would roar to life with a bleep and a flash of light, I crawled into bed.
I didn't sleep well, since I was keeping a half ear open for the power coming back on so I could reset my alarm clock. (My phone was on fumes by then, and I worried that it would die completely if I tried to use it as an alarm.) At about 1:15am, my fitful sleep was interrupted by the air conditioner coming on and a radio in the next room talking at us. Plonq and I ran around turning off some lights before going back to bed.
I still didn't sleep well. The book I'd been reading ( Station 11) had been on my mind a lot, and before the power went out I'd been cruising through back entries of Stand Still, Stay Silent, a great web comic with a post-apocalyptic plot. Those two things, plus the power being out, gave me weird, fucked up dreams about surviving past the end of the world. Monday was not a Good Day.
By the way, I finished Station 11 last night. It was good! Better than I thought it would be. It's totally set up for a sequel, but I feel like the author explored all she could about the main characters' lives before the plague, so the next book (if there is one) would have to be different in style.