gerisullivan | Living in the future: power outages

The power hardly ever goes out here in Wales, which is surprising given how remote the town is and the fact that we also have above-ground power lines. And when it does go out, it usually snaps back on within a minute or so.

It's stormy out tonight. The lights flickered and went off some 15-20 minutes ago. They came back on a few seconds later, then went out for good.

I finished writing and editing the piece I was working on at the time, then Googled and clicked my way over to the National Grid website. Ah, yes, there's the link for Storm Central. First I checked to see if they were reporting any outages in my area. Nope. Okay, so I reported my outage. The website confirmed my name and service location address, and asked a couple of questions. As far as I can tell in the dark, the power lines are still up. I have no idea if my neighbors have also lost power; their lights are usually out this time of night. Fortunately, they had a "don't know" ticky box along with the yes and no options on that one.

There are some noises I'm not going outside to investigate. Deer in the yard, maybe, or branches breaking and falling. Yes, I definitely just heard a branch crack, then fall through a fair bit of brush on its way to the ground. It's weird, as there's a definite lull in the storm.

The UPS still has a good bunch of power to keep my cable modem and router connected, and it's still powering my laptop, too. Huh...I didn't remember having the laptop plugged in there. It has battery power to carry it through temporary power outages, and is pretty good at regulating spikes and such, too, even without the usual surge protector power strips that everything in my office is plugged into.

The power's been down for a good half hour now. The only thing I'm doing differently right now is writing this post rather than turning my attention to the next project on my To Do list. And that just seems...weird.

Fortunately, I remembered where the wind-up flashlight was sitting. The laptop illuminates my office just fine for the sort of work I'm doing tonight, but I'll want the flashlight when I head upstairs to bed. I think I'll do that soon.

The National Grid website now shows my outage. Alas, there's no estimated time of service restoration yet. Their phone line yields an "all circuits are busy" message, so I'm apparently not the only one up late at night and calling in. Here's hoping the electricity is back by morning.