Powerless

This weekend has been a bit trying. Friday Kathy took Sue and Chris's daughter Kit to the Frederick Zoo and then an overnight stay at a hotel with a ginger friendly pool (indoors), so I had the mutts all to myself. Friday night as I lay in bed reading the light's flickered a couple times and then at about 10:30 the power went out completely. This was nothing new. Ever since we moved to this house, the Anne Arundel County power grid has always been a little undependable. It's gotten better over the last few years but we've learned to stock up on flashlights and candles just in case.

A picture of what you see when the lights go out

In the past these power outages have usually been as brief as they were sporadic, but because of some freak storm that moved through the area, we were just one of about a half a million households who had their lights (and more importantly the AC) snuffed out. Since I don't watch or listen to the news I had no idea how widespread the problem was until I drove to work Saturday morning and came across numerous traffic signals that were out as well as some main roads that were cut off by fallen trees.

Once I did make it to work, I found that there was no power there as well. Since almost all we do in the lab now is pretty computer driven, no power meant no work.  The landlord reported that the power company told them that the earliest we'd be back on line was 4:00 that afternoon.  When I relayed this to the boss he made the decision to keep the doors open until noon for people to pick up their orders but we would close for the day after that. Since there were 4 people scheduled I volunteered to leave early so after my hour long commute to work, I worked for about 40 minutes and the turned around and headed home.

Another effect of this freak storm was the effect it had on the local garage/yard sales. It seems like everyone was concentrating on doing yard clean up instead of opening their homes to treasure hunters like me. I did stop at one church sponsored yard sale on my was home but only managed to find yet one more book I don't have time to read.

The dogs were glad to see me when I returned home and aside from doing some yard cleanup of my own, I worked on my project of fortifying our fence line with bricks at the base to hopefully deter Sandy from doing anymore tunneling. The outside temperature was approaching 100 degrees but this job had to be done sooner rather than later. Our neighbors around the corner are doing some home improvements, including removing an old fireplace.  That can mean only one thing: FREE BRICKS! I'd already made a few wheel-barrel trips the night before so I took advantage of my new found free time and did a couple more trips. In the mean time, Kathy had returned home from her air conditioned excursion and now the orders of the day were to keep cool and try to salvage any of the thawing food from our freezer.

Living with a red head in the south is no easy feat. Gingers tend to feel the effects of heat 10 time more that normal people (it's a scientific fact) so if you take away the life saving AC, you run the risk of having one unhappy ginger. Lucky for us the master bedroom is located in the lower level of our split level house so it was considerably cooler than the upstairs so much of yesterday was spent on the bed with cool damp wash clothes to keep the heat a bay. Of course once the sun went down it took all it's natural light with it.  Reading by flashlight is fine if your on a camping trip but once it was lights out  it was time to try and get some sleep.


It was kind of hot and sticky, but not in a good way.  The dogs still insisted on sleeping on the bed with us so I'm sure our combined body heat added to the discomfort in the room. The air outside did cool down some after sundown but not enough to make opening our windows beneficial. When I did wake up (with some helpful insistence from the dogs) It was 7:00am and time for our morning walk. This time of year we need to get our walks out of the way before  the sun is too high which can make it dangerous for anyone wearing a fur coat. When we got back from that, I took Willow and Zappa on a car ride in search of any gas station with power so we could get coffee for me and a meat stick for them. I was also on the prowl for any bagged ice I could find to help try and save the stuff we'd stashed in the coolers.  No luck there but we did find a Shell station that could provide the other two necessities.

I was taking a shower at about 9:30 when the power came back on. Kathy admits she screamed with delight. The air conditioning kicked on immediately and in a short time all was right with the world, or at least our little corner of it. The first thing we both did when power was restored was to check our email and do a little post blackout catch up.