Lights Out!

Yesterday afternoon, around 4:00, I was sitting on the couch with my laptop, working. Suddenly, the lights went out, the furnace turned off, and I lost my internet connection. It was actually pretty bad timing, considering I had lots of work I needed to get done...but who am I to argue with a power outage? There's only so much work I can do in my job without internet access. So I called my dad and had a lovely little conversation with him.

By 4:30, I was beginning to wonder why on earth we still had no power. I also noticed, as it was getting darker outside, that most of our neighbors seemed to have lights! However, the house across the street had no lights on, and the street light in front of our house was out. I finally called Shawn to get the number for the electric company (we don't have a phone book here...we just use google to get numbers we need...usually). Once I reported the outage, I figured it wouldn't take long for them to figure out what was happening.

The first truck showed up outside our house a little after 5:00, but he left relatively quickly. By the time Shawn got home from work around 6:20, we still had no power, so we decided to go to the gym right away. We got home from the gym around 8:00...and still no power! Since I couldn't cook (and I didn't feel like eating PB&J for dinner), we went out to eat. When we got home from Applebee's around 9:30...there were 3 electric company trucks parked outside our house, including one with a crane! They had bright "construction site" lights set up, and we soon noticed that there was a large hole in our front yard!

Once we found a place to park on the street, we got a closer look at the activity. Turns out, that hole was just where they took the cover off of the hole where the transformer is located (so there was absolutely no damage done to our yard). Shawn spoke with the crew, and they let us know that the transformer had blown and needed to be replaced!

We watched them work a bit, and took some pictures. :-) The lights came back on around 10:20! We were pretty impressed by the whole situation, actually. Once I reported the outage, they got right on it and did what they needed to do, despite the fact that it was after "business hours," and despite the fact that so few houses were even affected by it (two of the four houses affected are actually vacant at the moment). It was an interesting experience for us!