Power Hungry

Do you realize how much you rely on electricity in a given day? The quantifiable number is - a lot. In our house, we use more than the average person, what with the 4 computers running all day, every day, and the full sized freezer from the 1950's that I am sure costs more to run than the rest of my entire house. Just to be sure of that, we put it in the garage, so that all the pent up heat of summer could force it into overdrive.

Do you know how often the power goes out in Bowie? The stats show - all the time. Easily 6 times a year, which is actually a significant decrease from the number of outages that we dealt with in years prior. It used to be multiple times a week during the rainier months. And for some reason, Bowie seems to have a tornado magnet buried deep in its suburban core. We have been struck directly with one at our house, one within 10 miles, and at least 2 others have passed within 50 miles of us, in the past 5 years. The outages are always long - the worst was over 5 days.

Cut to Sunday night - its raining, hard. We go to bed, and I am awakened 15 minutes later to the sounds of silence. (Hello darkness my old friend!) The cacophony that is usually my bedroom is still. No fan, no TV/computer combo humming, and no sound machine. I spend the night restlessly trying to figure out where I am going to work from tomorrow, since working from home for a computer-based job is hard without a working computer.

Larry reminds me that he has created a generator out of our woodshed/Chevy S-10 Blazer. The Blazer that has been housing the remnants of a dug up stump for over a year. The same Blazer that has a back window made of Lexan, because a rolling stump smashed the old one out. The same Blazer that was stolen and now has an advanced-magnetic-relay-switch-dealy that starts it. Oh, and a light that blinks so that it looks like we have an alarm. And a solar panel to keep that light from killing the battery. Yeah, that Blazer. Truckasarous, how I love thee!

Larry connects extension cords from the truck and runs them into the house to power the Verizon box, the network stuff, my Vonage phone, and my laptop; my virtual office. He has some fancy battery thing that is supposed to keep the computers from shutting down instantly in case of a quick power loss, but Bowie always goes big, or goes home, so if the power is out for 5 minutes, it's usually out for at least 5 hours. The battery thing beeps every thirty seconds. Even with the power from the woodshed, it keeps beeping. And beeping. Then it starts frantically beeping and then only one second every thirty seconds does it NOT beep. Larry disconnects it, Thank God. Had he not, I would not be here to write this, due to my exploding head.

While I work, Larry adds gas to the woodshed from a small can he has, while its running. He swears this is not dangerous.

Oh, did I mention Larry was leaving for a business trip. Leaving me, his pregnant wife, in a house with no power, and therefore, no heat on a 49 degree day, to eat all of the food in our massive, ozone depleting freezer before it goes bad.

I appreciate everything he did for me to get my "office" up and running, and then, Larry leaves. I work the rest of the morning and early afternoon in cold silence. I have a conference call scheduled for 2:30, and receive a call at around 2:10. 5 minutes into the call, the phone dies. Everything dies. I run outside, and the truck is off. I use a magic decoder ring and ESP to get it started again. The tank reads EMPTY. Here lies my dilemma.

Do I:

A. take my car with the gas can to the gas station, fill it up, return home, and add the gas to the truck?

B. Take the truck, which is on E, and has just died from running out gas, and hope that I make it to the gas station?

Well, the only gas can I see is broken at the nozzle, which is, I assume, the reason Larry smelled like gas when he came in after filling the tank initially. I call my 2:30 client and pushed the meeting to 3. I run back outside, unhook the extension cords from the truck, and head to the gas station, all the while repeating the mantra "Please don't die, please don't die." To ensure that I would be completely screwed if it did die, I forget my phone at home.

I make it to the gas station. The most expensive gas station in town, the one I never go to. $67 later, the truck is full of gas. I gingerly drive home (the window-exploding stump is still rolling around in the trunk). As I pull up to the house, the porch lights are on.

The porch lights that need power to operate. Power that I am sure I would have seen lighting up my lights had I looked in the rear view mirror as I slowly rolled away, begging the combustion-engine gods to drink only what they absolutely needed.

So, how was your Monday?