It was a windy but clear and beautiful day.
At around 12:35 p.m., the electricity went off. This happens frequently around here, sometimes every other day for a stretch. The “hiccups” last maybe a second or two, just long enough to shut down your computer and set all the digital clocks to blinking. This time the power stayed off until sometime between 3:30 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. So far, so good: no electricity under a bright blue sky for over three hours, but hey, stuff happens.
Ah, but now I have DSL. For reasons known only to Qwest and God, a power outage of even a few minutes knocks out the Internet connection for four to five hours. This time it took approximately six hours for my connection to be restored. Counting the time the power was off, it was like 1910 around here for about nine hours. I did what any self-respecting human would do under the circumstances: sat peacefully outside in the sun with my wife and cat, read the paper, ate a second lunch… Eventually I worked on Web site graphics on the MacBook until the battery ran down, and about then the power came back on.
Deprivation is a relative thing, though. In Baghdad there might not be any power at all, and I know they’re not expecting a freeze tonight like we are.
“It’s okay to stop,” she said, referring to the chores neither of us could finish without electricity. We sat closely together almost face to face, our chairs arranged to take advantage of the shrinking pool of sunlight at the edge of the encroaching shadow of the big elm tree. It was closer than we usually sat, and I liked it.
The Internet is a marvelous thing. The Web, the blogosphere, the ol’ netroots community. Buy stuff, sell stuff, entertainment and news. Email, the universal equalizer. And it all disappears in the twinkling of an eye when the power goes off.
Voting machines don’t work then, either.
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“Voting machines don’t work then, either.” Which explains our problem quite succinctly, doesn’t it John? The past several elections, the electricity’s been all too reliable.
I saw a predicted low of 25 for Taos last night. (Temp there is currently reading 30 according to my homepage.) Is this a bit early for a freeze? Does this mean we could mean our usual October visit to the area could be AFTER the best fall colors?
There’s a headline in this morning’s El Paso Times. Something about El Nino’s going to affect our weather. I haven’t read it yet. Maybe I was too quick to credit your dive south of freezing to global warming?
Hopefully there was a little less fossil fuel burned with the outage.
Not too early for a little frost, too early for a killing hard freeze at this altitude. The official temps come from the airport anyway, and there isn’t much vegetation or sheltering topography out there.