Left in the dark again!

We had another power outage that lasted slightly over three hours!

Tuesday is my “chores day.” On Monday I get the laundry done and run my errands for the week, as many of them as I can compress into one trip. On Tuesday, I change the animals’ litter boxes and cages, vacuum, and every other week, go to the transfer station with the trash and recyclables. This was a transfer station week. However, I was all done with everything by 3:30 p.m. and was then trying to get some work done. It was a calm, chilly, bright, sunny day–it got to 42, but not above that. At 5:08 p.m…foom. The power went out.

I don’t have the slightest idea why. I went into the living room, plugged in the old analog telephone that I keep for power outages, and called National Grid. As I was doing so, I saw first a police car, lights flashing, then an ambulance head down my street. It’s therefore reasonable to guess that there was an accident down the road a ways, but that might have just been a coincidence.

I kept on working on the laptop’s battery, although I was offline. I actually had a fruitful session, because I tried out some new html tags and I got them to work. However, my laptop’s battery got very low, and then sunset came, and there was still no power. The temperature was dropping below the freezing mark, too. The power flicked on for a few seconds just at sunset but went right back off.

I have a Coleman lantern but it’s a pain to drag it out and fuss around filling it unless I really need it. I had several candles on the kitchen table, and I brought in firewood and started a fire. I lit this cute little candle lantern (a gift from annef) and hung that over the kitchen sink and got the dishes done, and did a few more chores. Like Saturday night, this was a localized outage: I could see streetlights and lights on at some of my neighbors’ houses (although not my immediate neighbors on either side). It was still clear and calm out, with a bright crescent moon and lots of stars. I called National Grid to see if they had a recorded message with any information, and they said it was “the overhead lines” and we should have power restored “by 9:00 p.m.”

Vincent got into one of his inexplicable moods and decided he wanted to be all cuddly. This was not in synch with my wishes, not only because I was trying to read the newspaper with a flashlight, while standing up, but there were several candles on the table. Vincent got up on the table, purring and nuzzling, and I put him down; he got up on the table, I put him down; he got up on the table, I put him down; he got up on the table and set his tail on fire in one of the candle flames. No harm done, but what a stink!! Gods! After that, he stayed off the table. (Vincent has…had…an enormous fluffy tail. He’s set it on fire before. *wry smile)

The power went on about half an hour ago, and I waited a few minutes before I went around resetting things. I got an automated call from National Grid to check and see if the power was on, which I don’t recall happening before. I wonder if I’ll ever hear the explanation?