Progress Revisited

There has to be a bright side to progress. And there is ... convenience. So convenient that you don't even know it's there, until it's gone.
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I admit, I've fallen into the AC habit. And when there's a storm brewing, and we had a few of them just a couple days ago, the boys like to turn on the Weather Channel. So you might say electricity is important in my household.

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So when the last storm of the day knocked down four electric poles just outside my subdvision, naturally we lost power. These weren't your garden variety bringing-the-power-home poles, no, they were the high-voltage transmission lines that cut a swath between the farms, between the new house farms, that rarely cross any roads. The Big Ones.

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So when they came down, they didn't hit anything. But they did cross the road. And it's still closed. And it will remain closed while they work 24 hours a day to get them back up so they can re-open the road by tomorrow.

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Have you ever lived in an area, particularly a city (oh, like, Chicago?) where the power goes out if everybody uses their AC and someone turns on a hair dryer? And it takes a couple days for it to come back on? And all the neighbors get all ticked off at the smart guy with his own back-up generator?

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Well, I don't live there anymore, and if you do, then just stop reading right now. Because we lost power for a total of ten minutes.

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I will NOT be bitchin about the electric bill this month.