Tag: power outage

Being plugged in or not

Summer solstice

Being plugged in or not has popped up several times earlier this year.

Memorial Day week

My wife suggested the family stay at a timeshare in Hancock, MA, just across the border from New York. I don’t know how relaxing it was for my wife because she had to travel to Albany and back, 45 minutes each way, almost every day for work. One of my daughter’s friends came as well. The entity allowed four devices to be connected to the Internet.

My daughter, her friend, and my wife opted to connect to their phones. But I chose my laptop. I could write blog posts, check email, and post to Facebook. More importantly, I played Wordle on my laptop, and I had a 515-game streak.

Still, I was surprised that I had such poor cell reception outside the resort. Indeed, I couldn’t use my phone until I got about five miles into New York.

June 5/6

About a quarter before midnight, my wife asked to use my laptop. She generally leaves hers at work.

I unplugged mine and gave it to her. When she was done, I put mine back in place, played Wordle, and went to bed.

During the morning, I checked my email and wrote a blog post, et al., until I noticed that my battery was running low. I had failed to plug it in. OK, easy, right? Not easy. I must have stepped on the end of the charger that plugs into the device.

I could get a new one from Amazon in two days, but that wouldn’t do, because Blog, Wordle, et al. So, I hopped on a bus to Best Buy and purchased a Microsoft 65W Wall Surface charger. (I’m writing this so I’ll know what I need in the future.)

June 20

It was the third of three days of 90F+ temperatures.  Around 5:30 pm, as the Times Union noted: “A brutal storm blew through Albany early Thursday evening, taking down trees, damaging buildings… National Weather Service meteorologist Brett Rathbun said it’s not likely a tornado tore through the city. Instead, hot and humid air was likely suddenly pushed downward as a cold front rolled in and ended this week’s heat wave, causing short-lived and intense wind gusts in what was likely a pulse, or single-cell, thunderstorm.” Also, power was cut for thousands, including us.

It was fine for a time. The restaurants at the end of Madison Avenue, less than two blocks away, still had power and were doing brisk business. (Actually, the real danger is that drivers, impatient with the nearby intersection, which I have described, nearly caused a dozen accidents.

As nightfall came, my wife took my daughter’s two soaked friends home. My wife and my daughter then went to get more flashlights and to charge our phones in the car.

I tried to read by flashlight, but that got old in six pages. Instead, I sat on the front porch in a lawn chair. Here’s the thing that’s interesting to me: I enjoyed it. A lot. I couldn’t be on my laptop, and I didn’t have my cellphone, so I embraced the moment.

Because of light pollution, city skies aren’t pitch black, so I could peruse the outlines of the massive trees nearby. Watching people negotiate the dark with flashlights and cellphones gave me the feeling that we were all in it together.

Of course, trying to go to sleep sans air conditioner or fan was a drag, but the power thankfully returned at about 11:30 pm.

Yes, it snows in Albany in March

Reading in the dark

Some folks became distraught when the forecast suggested a four-letter word starting with S on Saturday. But it snows in Albany in March, even after the vernal equinox. We got maybe three or four inches, c. 8 cm. It wasn’t a big deal because we had received less than two feet all season. OR SO I THOUGHT.

Some folks north of Albany, and especially in Vermont, got hammered with from a foot to close to three feet. THEY can complain!

My initial annoyance was that there was virtually no snow, just rain. Because of an error in construction, our sidewalk puddles greatly. Walking past our house, one needed waders. Did you ever try to shovel rain?

Fortunately, the precipitation turned to snow, and I was able to shovel the heavy mess. I am very good at removing snow; I do not create a shovelwidth-wide path.

That’s the night the lights went out in Albany

More inconvenient was that the power went out shortly after 5 pm. I discovered that my bedroom is the best place to read before dark. Not only does it have a western exposure, but the backyard is sufficiently large.

So I did what I do too infrequently: I finished the last 30 pages of one book and read the first 30 pages of another.

Several years ago, I purchased Eco-I-Lite, a “rechargeable & ready emergency flashlight… for when the power goes out.” For some reason, someone had unplugged it, and the parts—the plug and flashlight—disappeared into two different boxes. Fortunately, I found both sections in late February and plugged them into the wall. It was handy.

Kellogg’s CEO recently opined that poor families should eat cold cereal for dinner. This comment rightly received a lot of pushback, as “cereal prices have risen 28% over the last four years.” That night, I DID have cereal for dinner, but it was the combo of General Mills and Post cereals. My wife chose cold pizza instead. Dinner by candlelight; how romantic.

The power returned at 9:26 p.m. I know this because the DVR started recording the figure skating my wife wanted to watch.

And then

The next day, the sidewalk was akin to an ice rink as the temperature plummeted overnight. I had to use rock salt, or whatever it is that they make for this purpose.  Scraping off my wife’s car was onerous. Then she noticed this:

The severed part of the tree, fortunately, fell onto another tree rather than the house behind it, or our car, which was parked under the tree. The temperature was 20F.

After church, we checked out the arboreal destruction in Washington Park, which was extensive. Along State Street, we saw this  minor example:

I theorize that the rapid temperature changes caused the water to freeze on the trees, making them vulnerable, especially the evergreens.

Now it was 35F, above freezing. As my wife drove us home, the ice that had adhered to our car roof was dislodged and rushed onto our front windshield. At the next red light, I jumped out of the car and cleared the icebergs. 

The other unfortunate outcome of the weather variations was a sudden plethora of potholes in places that were not problems two days earlier. Some of them were pretty large.

So, even a four-inch snowstorm CAN be a PITA.

A tree falls in Albany

Estimated Time of Restoration – Assessing

tree falls
this was actually in Oregon
As I’ve noted, my family had this great week in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts in mid-August, most of which I’ve noted. My daughter went to a Six Flags amusement park with her three cousins and an uncle when my wife and I saw a play.

We get home around 2 p.m. on a Friday and start putting things away, including a lot of leftover perishable food squeezed into the refrigerator.

There was a thunderstorm warning for Albany County from 4:45 to 5:45 pm, and some rain did fall, but it didn’t seem so bad. So my wife drove out to the bank. A few moments later, a deluge worthy of Louis XIV fell.

It was raining the extreme rain when the umbrella and slicker are useless. Then it rained even harder so that a couple young women walking by started screaming. I ran out to see if they were being assaulted, and they were, by the skies.

The house lights flickered three or four times, then stayed on for about 10 seconds, before going out altogether. This was roughly at 6 p.m.

Interestingly, there was a notice on my phone from our power company, National Grid. “6:15 pm We detected power outages near [address]. There are currently 229 other customers also associated with this outage. We are investigating and will provide updates around progress when we get more information.” That was 229 in OUR section of the grid; there were plenty of other outages, I later learned.

“Outage Status – New Outage; Estimated Time of Restoration – Assessing.” Now I didn’t actually SEE this information until the next day, because my phone, which had died, which it does regularly. Even my daughter, who is much more diligent about these things, had no phone eventually.

My wife finally got home – she waited out the storm, wisely, and reported a tree down on Lancaster Street, a couple blocks away, and insisted that I see it. It was impressive. A large branch on a tree between two houses, almost certainly struck by lightning, toppled across the street, taking a power line with it, but barely missing someone’s car.

We got out the flashlights and the candles. My wife got pizza from the place a couple blocks away, which had power. But it was so quiet in the house I walked to the local CVS and bought batteries so we could at least listen to the radio.

I carried a flashlight because my block was dark except for the school, which must have an emergency generator. Suddenly, I started craving the same until my wife told me the process would cost us thousands, which somewhat dampened my enthusiasm.

We played UNO by candlelight. I think not having electricity actually got my daughter to go to sleep earlier than usual. But I couldn’t sleep because it was Too Darn Hot.

In the morning, I went onto the front porch to read the newspaper. Then at 9:03 a.m., I heard our air conditioner kick on. Others in the neighborhood got power overnight. National Grid said the neighborhood power was back at 12:41 p.m.

Subsequent to that, we had a couple more periods of large amounts of rain falling in a very short period of time, with the attendant flash flooding. My wife told my daughter to put away the candles, but the teen was understandably resistant.

What an interesting homecoming. Note: I said “A tree fell in Albany,” but there were quite a few, I believe.

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