We have PG&E for our electric power. That's "Pacific Gas and Electric" for those not in the acronym know.
The people across the street, in a subdivision built some five years later than ours, have Modesto Irrigation District as their power suppliers.
That's the stage. Yesterday, after viewing the weather forecast and the weather alerts, I patrolled the yards and made sure we were wind-safe (high winds being predicted) and considered making copious amounts of braised chicken in case the power went out.
We backed out of the chicken cookup; surely the power wouldn't go out again so soon, as we'd spent a dark evening just a couple days ago when the power went out during a moderate rain.
The lasagna Bernie had put in the oven had another 30 minutes to go when we lost power today.
Now, there was enough heat in the oven to bake the creation through, and we had a lovely lasagna lunch in spite of the lack of power, but still. This is 2011 and it was just a spring rainstorm, and the wind advisory had long since expired. And yes, the people across the street still had power, as they always do when we are in the dark.
PG&E ... not entirely worthless, but not to be counted on. I knew that. I should have made chicken the day before.
Nevertheless, it bears mentioning that when the power was out the other evening, we lit a couple candles and hung out in the kitchen where the wood stove kept everything nice and warm, and there being no TV or computers, Bernie and I just sat and talked over glasses of wine. Frankly, I was glad for the outage. Perhaps PG&E should schedule its screw-ups for the evening hours all the time.
3 comments:
What if... the era of dependable electricity is something behind us now, like speak-easies and New Kids On The Block? The population goes up, the infrastructure decays, and the available resources to make things shiny new seem to be dwindling.
Maybe I read too much post-apocalyptic fiction. But I wonder if Lillian will be sitting around in candle light with her grandchildren, talking about the days when you could count on electricity being available ANY time, ALL the time, listening to the little ones sing, "oh oh OH oh-oh... the light stuff!"
T gets restless when the power is out. I light a candle and dig out the spinning. It's always good to have a low-tech hobby.
*cough cough* What grandma, they had ele-ctri-cityyy?
Hurricane environment here. Have a rather large industrial sized generator in the back that gets run every other month to make sure it will work should everything go poof. Using a pen and paper is fine for work and editing but I really like my laptop for writing.
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