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December 26, 2005
The Great Xmas Blackout of '05
My "get up and go to work" alarm woke me up at 6:15 Christmas morning. I turn it off and went back to sleep. The "get up and feed the diabetic cat" alarm on my phone went off at 7:30, at which point I wandered out into the other room, measured out Junior's food and put it in his cage with him, without so much as really noticing. A half hour later, the "mediate the diabetic cat" alarm (also on my phone) went off and I put on my glasses, walked out and tried turning on the light.
Nothing.
I quickly decided that we had lost power. I dosed the cat in the dark, and called the electric company. It turns out that there was a pretty serious wind storm on Christmas eve - enough to knock power out for some 15,000 customers in the Puget Sound area - us included.
The way I figure it, it's all my mother-in-law's fault.
See we went into Seattle on Saturday, and she apparently put in a request that it not rain while we were out walking around - which it didn't. I figure that the nights rain and wind storm was just the side effect of catching up on the day's rain.
Aside from the lack of electricity, Christmas pretty much proceeded as normal - though without the oven we deferred the "spend all day cooking enough food for an army and eat a tiny portion of it in 20 minutes" dinner. (That's today, according to plan.)
Dawnise's folks retired fairly early, and Dawnise and I took her notebook into bed and watched Hudson Hawk before knocking off around 11, by which time the power was still out.
Power's on this morning - and aside from my office (where the aforementioned cause of the storm is sleeping) I've reset all the clocks around the house and generally put things back to rights.
I dunno if I'd choose to have no power on Christmas, but truth be told, it really didn't bother me too much.
Hope everyone reading this had a good holiday, and in case we don't talk to you in person, best wishes to you and yours for the coming year.
Wondering how we're going to top this while folks are visiting for Dawnise's birthday next month... The mind boggles.
Posted by dberger at December 26, 2005 8:42 AM