Let There Be Light

I was sitting here minding my own business. The ballgame was on television and for a change the Tigers were winning. My son was resting in his room.

Suddenly there was a quick flash of light outside. The television screen went black. The lights dimmed.

There was still sound on the TV and I was afraid to turn it off for fear it would not come back on. I wanted to hear the end of the game. I could not check the score on my computer because the internet was not working.

My son came from his room. He said, "We're having a brown-out." I knew that. We waited to see if the problem would fix itself. It did not.

I was going to make spaghetti for supper. With no lights (or very little) in the kitchen I could not see to cook. We decided to take a run into a bigger city for fast food.

As we walked out to get into the truck the woman across the street came out of her house. She said that the whole town was without power but the electric company was on its way.

She lives with her son but he was out for the afternoon with friends. I asked her if she was okay. She was. Did she need anything? She did not. After I was sure that she just wanted to be the one to tell someone about the news we left.

As we were driving toward the highway we met a man who was towing the remains of a tree he had cut down behind his pickup. I told my son he was trying to remove the evidence that he was the cause of all this. We laughed.

It was a bit over an hour when we returned home. It is a long drive to get fast food here. There was no power at all.

My son went to his room before he sat down to eat. He was halfway there and the lights came on. Yay!!

The satellite dish had to reset the receiver before we could see if the TV was damaged. Thankfully it was fine.

There was a replay of the ballgame that night so I was able to see the end. Yay again.

We use CFL light bulbs to conserve energy. Unfortunately they do not adapt well to power outages. We had to replace several of them. That means we will have to replace them the net time we go to the store.

And I hate having to reset my alarm clock. The wall clock is battery operated so it needed no attention. And the telephone flashes after a power outage until an incoming call. So I had to have my son call me using his cell phone.

All in all it was an exciting day in my mundane life.

Oh by the way, the problem was not the man who cut down his tree. Whatever it was I saw the repair crew coming back from the opposite direction.