Outage

Yesterday the city installed a new utility pole adjacent to our driveway, next to the old one. Today the bucket trucks were back along with a blocked street and a police officer to guide motorists around the block. The officer told me yesterday that the utility companies needed to come to switch over the wires.

A little after 10 am the doorbell rang, and I figured it was related to the work. A worker was on the porch and informed me that the power would be shut off in about 20 minutes so the wire carrying electricity could be moved to the new pole, which could take up to 90 minutes. I hurriedly finished my breakfast so I would not have to open the refrigerator while the power was off, and shut off the air conditioners and my computer.

It took a while longer than the estimate before the shutoff occurred. I sat in the coolest room and read the newspaper and a book. It didn't get as warm inside as I'd expected, and power came back on after only about an hour. Fortunately it was not nearly as much of an inconvenience as it might have been on a day as humid as this one was.