My wife presented me with a problem the other day, and I gave her an easy solution since I felt prepared and I went off to work, stopping at the Credit Union to report that someone had given me too much money, $546.43 in round figures on the 23rd of October, when they checked the deposit they found it entered at a branch I never use, and they would get back with me about it when they investigated. Now my inmates aren't yet redeemed and they always tell me to keep the money and don't report it - about eight years ago someone dropped a couple grand in an almost dead account and I turned it in, too. By Thursday they found the teller that hit a four instead of a one and the proper account for the deposit, and there is a happier customer somewhere. Although, having read No Country for Old Men, my token Hispanic offers to take the drugs and the money off my hands if I wander across some loose loot I feel obligated to remove from the environment, I told him I would be keeping the engraved forty-five. Just appreciating fine mechanics and art blended so well, and he will never be allowed to lawfully have a firearm - I will have to hold it for him.
Anyway, the week is wrapped up at work, I have a story to tell at the Antique Sandwich Company in Ruston tomorrow night with the other story tellers for our share of Tellebration. Wish you could be there but only because some of the other story tellers really are great, and the food is fun - the closest I get to working as a counter-culture fellow from the seventies...
Anyway, I came home to a wonderful pre-Thanksgiving week dinner, intending to do my shopping and such tomorrow, maybe shooting and cleaning up the church yard and many things, for tonight would be watching wrestling with my wife. I almost stopped to get some batteries I didn't have for a flash light but didn't - I am a recluse and if I didn't have a wife I would be a hermit. Anyway, after dinner and checking a third of my favorite blogs, I sat down to get a quick wargame in to destroy my enemies and hear the wails of their women, when the power went off. Which brings me back to the title of this post, where were you when the lights went off?
Well, my wife was on the treadmill in the garage/gym, and the darkness with a treadmill that doesn't move suddenly is dangerous but she wasn't going too fast and she found her way to the family room. Where I was looking for the candles and match sets that once were strategically placed around the home, but our house is still in disarray from the vertical blind installation which hasn't been completed yet. And my flashlight is with my carry knives at eye height on my right hand side, except that was what I gave my wife to replace hers until I got D size batteries for her flash light. That isn't too bad - there is one candle in a decorative dragon candle stand in my bookcase behind me, and matches are beside the knives and a match can light a candle and destroy the power of the darkness. Cool, go to the family room and hit the switch to the gas fireplace - ah, instant heat and flickering light - so romantic. My wife finds more matches, more candles and navigation is now a breeze. But if I stay home I may have to talk, time to go find a store with power matches, batteries, more candles and kerosene lamps. I feel so lucky that I don't have to crank the tin lizzie to get her going for the drive in the darkness, some technology is still working.
Ever read S. M. Stirling? This isn't Dies the Fire, but still it is so quiet and dark outside our home, I stop and ask neighbors if they need candles, batteries or anything. They say they are fine. I do find power for the protected, down the road, and two stores where I stock up a bit - the missing batteries, two more flash lights, matches, candles and the kerosene lamp I have been promising myself during every blackout. I return home with the essentials. Back home to set everything right, plenty of emergency light, NOW. The oil lamp is so nice for sustained light. So I am set, and I call my mother to talk for an hour, after about forty-five more minutes the power returns and we can watch the last hour of wrestling, eat the blue cheese and drink a little wine.
Aside from the way Gravity Rules things in my life, Murphy has a way of making his Laws well known. I should have stopped for those batteries on the way home two days ago. Lived and learnt! Practice with one hand, off hand, other hand and in the darkness.
3 comments:
Dies the Fire is a very interesting series! Just remember, Murphy was an OPTOMIST!
My wife always asks when the power goes out if I called the power company. Last time I didn't and WE WERE the only ones without power for over 3 hours. A squirrel a mile away chose to his Wallinda act in the wrong place, died and shorted us out in the process.
Had to eat some crow on that one.
All The Best,
Frank W. James
When the power goes out on us, we are always ready since we just pull out our camping equipment from the prior summer. Using canned heat as backup cooking works fine, plus we have a kerosene heater from the 1980's and a kerosene "Alladin's Lamp" from the 1970's to make it all work well. It helps that our 1915 house is drafty. We have few worries about carbon monoxide poisoning in our situation. The house needs to be insulated in more places than the attic, though.
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