Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Ah, the joys of rural life!

Okay, so that was slightly facetious. The Spawn and I departed for the local farm store and library (sequential, not simultaneous) this morning. There were enough chicks, goslings, etcetera to make the farm store a success and the library contained books, which is also a good thing. The return home was where things went awry.

We turned into the driveway to find three LARGE trucks parked there. Missing was the Better Half's car (he went to see a man about a llama). It turned out that, without any warning whatsoever, the local utility company decided to stop by and upgrade one of the power lines and install a sodium vapour light on the power pole.

This was not *wholly* unexpected as both of these things were supposed to happen at some point. It was just Murphic in the extreme for it to happen when no one was home. So computers were running in the house. Hooray for the lowly UPS. Everything ended up shutting down gracefully enough to not leave the smell of smoke in the house. Well, except for the smell generated by my sotto voce comments. They also tripped the fuse for the pump, which was a trifle more difficult to fix. When the Better Half finally returned, he managed to figure out which of the black boxes in the pump house actually WAS the fuse.

Everything is back to normal again, barring my nerves, which are still jangled. The Spawn and I ended up being blocked into the house with no power and no water...right at lunch time. And getting food into a preschooler is no light matter. Thank goodness for frozen strawberries.

Meanwhile, the acquisition of large containers for water is now a high priority rather than a medium priority. We now know how to get the pump running again when the fuse trips. A generator would definitely be a good thing before next winter. And Clark County Public Utilities does not get a Christmas card this year.

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