What, Again?!

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About forty minutes after I went to bed last night, the power went off again. This time just the once. I wasn't sound asleep, and the emergency light in the hall coming on woke me. I checked everything, then went back to bed. My calico was a bit upset, presumably due to the UPSes beeping, but was easily calmed. I managed to doze some, but didn't get soundly to sleep. About three hours later the power came back on. This time it was off long enough that the UPS keeping the video recorder alive ran down. I was wide awake, so I set the clock and reprogrammed it. I went back to bed but needed a while to get to sleep. Then I awoke about the same time as I did yesterday, a bit after 7, and couldn't get back to sleep. I sense a nap in the near future.

Comments

Power outages

Patricia Marie Allen's picture

In my little corner of the world, winter power outages are the norm. We keep our battery powered camp lanterns in the house. One in the bedroom and one on the dining room table. We also keep our propane camps stove under the table.

Our last outage lasted for about 3 1/2 hours. Interestingly enough, I was in the office at the time. I'd just finished doing some maintenance on my wife's computer. So in the pitch dark, I felt my way to the hall, then to the living room, around the corner to the kitchen, around the counter to the where the fridge sets next to the counter. I'm not sure why, but we keep a small flashlight there. With that, I located the lantern on the table, lit it and took it to my wife who had been sitting in the dark in the living room. Had I been sitting in my recliner as usual with my laptop surfing the web, I'd have had my phone within reach and could have used the flash light on the phone for that.

I then retrieved the lantern from the bedroom and put it on the island between the kitchen and living room. And we waited out the power outage. Since it started at about 6:00 it was just after dinner and too early to just go to bed. Of course, with no power, that meant no heat. By the time the power came back on the house was down to a chilly 58 degrees (F) and the programmable thermostat had gone to it's night setting of 55.

We went around and turned off all the lights and went to bed early.

Hugs
Patricia

Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann

hey, stickman

i have figured out and solved your problem. if you unplug and turn off all the electronics in your place, and pull a curtain on your window, there will be nothing to wake you up.....no lights, no bells, no beeps. even the sun can't intrude to bother you. your dog makes a good wake up clock once you regulate the letting him out and you getting up to about the same time. thats how it was done before we were condemned to the modern world. and think how much more time the kids will have for homework on the computer and you then turn them off . you're welcome! ;))

Here's my funny(?) power outage story ...

One rare outage finally lasted 2+ days. I really wanted to cook something.

Gas stove, so no problems, right?

Nope. Electronic ignition.

So there I am, lighting my gas stove with one of those butane (?) charcoal grill 'stick' lighters ... No, not with a match held in my hand. I know about my stove's Fwooomph!! trick.
---
I had enough battery LED flashlights to get about safely at night & for bed. I'm getting old(er) enough that a trip-fall is a really bad idea ...

And I have a number of go-to-flashlight-mode LED nightlights.
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I was able to spend much of the outage at my (unaffected) library with lights and my laptop.

=== PSA Section ===
First rule for a power outage is, of course, fridge & freezer stay closed. (No, don't 'check', or grab the creamer, or ...)
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Electric garage door openers (that keep the main door locked) can be disconnected manually from inside the garage. Then manually operate the main (car) door, and 'escape' with your car. Then you get to go back into the garage, and use the dead-bolt slide to lock the main door.
...
On second thought, just call a friend or taxi ...

We lost power for quite a

We lost power for quite a while after a set of windstorms - we were sort of at the tail end of repairs, due to how the damage was.

The little 2k generator was enough to cool down the fridge and chest freezer, while we stayed at my folks because of the heat.


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

Not Quite The Same

joannebarbarella's picture

But similar.
I live on the 11th floor of an apartment block. Every now and again a screaming siren goes off throughout the building to warn all of us that there is a fire and we must "EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY". This always seems to happen around 7 a.m. when I am happily sleeping. Now that I am retired I don't get up at sparrow-fart (or stupid o'clock).

When the alarm sounds the elevator switches off automatically so to exit the building I must hobble down the emergency stairs. The "EMERGENCY" is not over until the local Fire Brigade has turned up and established that it is a false alarm (usually caused by a sprinkler malfunction). the firies are usually pretty prompt and arrive within a few minutes.

After adhering to the rules the first couple of times I now don my dressing gown and go out onto my balcony to see if there is any sign of smoke or flames being emitted from any of the other apartments. So far the answer has been negative, so I go back to bed.