Well there I was with my daughter right after she had awaken from a nice afternoon nap. We were sitting there watching an Elmo DVD when there was a loud "THUD" outside and the power went out. My first thought was that a transformer blew out by the street. So off I went to look (for continuity sake, I handed my daughter off to her mommy).
The first thing I see as I hike down the driveway were my garbage cans knocked over and garbage strewn about, as I get closer there are cars pulling over and low and behold, this car .... It is 1:30pm
And upon yet closer investigation I put the pieces together and figured out that he had just hit the utility pole (and he is lucky to be unhurt). As you can see the pole is broken and it caused the line fuse on the pole to blow, which equals no power.
Well the dark house didn't sit well with the little one so we decided we needed to go out for dinner, and off we went! It is now 4:30pm. The repair crew had just arrived around 6pm as we got back from dinner so we decided to head out to the mall for a bit, let Bobbin play at in the play area, and hang out where there was light. Hit R.E.I to get some lanterns and batteries (this weeks project, an emergency kit for 3 days or survival, I let you know how that goes).
As we got closer to home we wondered if the work was done yet or not as we noticed the bright glow in the sky in the distance, that was the crew at our house. When then got home yet again around 8:30-ish, the crew had our driveway blocked so we parked across the street and "walked in".
I fired up the generator (thanks Rich) and got some light going and get Bobbin ready for bed. I checked the phone and it still worked (yay). Around 10pm I saw a light move down the driveway, so I stepped out to the deck, and it was a workman getting our house un-bypassed and he said, "it would not be long now". So around 10pm the house light up (yay) and I quickly went to work "turning on" the rest of the house and getting the generator offline and headed across the street to get our car.
It took the crew 20 minutes to clear out of the driveway. I finally get back in the house to finish up and check email ... but wait I see that the network is not connecting to the internet ... hmmm .... I pickup the phone and guess what NO DIAL TONE, but it just work a couple of hours ago .... THANK YOU PSE for cutting my phone line and not telling anyone.
I called the phone company as soon as I realized what was wrong, they logged my call and scheduled the soonest repair appointment, they have me all fixed up no later than 5pm Tuesday, you have to be kidding me. I called PSE to speak to a supervisor, none to be found, they don't have any on duty on the weekends, just a crew of telephone operator/dispatchers to take power outage calls. Long story short I was lucky to have the phone company arrive this afternoon and get that fixed by 3:15pm.
PSE, be ready I'm calling your ass tomorrow morning.
Posted by Timothy at December 3, 2006 4:34 PM