Thursday, January 31, 2008

A Day in the Dark

I woke up this morning at the regular time, hopped into the shower, grabbed a bite of breakfast, picked up the paper off of SuperNeighbor’s lawn (he’s out of town until Monday afternoon. I wasn’t stealing it) and settled in for another day of I’m-never-quite-sure-what with the new job.

After about 45 minutes in the office, I heard Something Big pull up out in front of the house. It was a Duquesne Light truck. No biggie, I thought. We just switched the utilities into our name last week after we closed on the house. They’re here to read the meter.

But, about 10 minutes after that, I heard a knock on the door. So I went to answer it.

It was Duquesne Light Guy.

I was going to be without electricity from “very soon” until about 3:30 pm. “Why?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “The transformer behind your house is about to fall off of its pole, and we need to fix it.”


Well what can you say to that? I called the home office, fired off a few quick emails and got ready to lose power. That happened at about 10:40 am.


From that point on, this was the view straight out of my kitchen window. OK, so the photo is taken from my living room window, but only because there was a tree in the way when I looked out of the kitchen window. The dudes were up there for about an hour when I left for my parents house where they had both electricity and the Internets.

Oh, and that thing hanging out of the lower guy’s right hand? It’s connected to the pole that goes to our house and several others in the neighborhood.

Between when the power went out and when I left for the afternoon, I did a few things that didn’t require electricity. I laid out my blocks so I could sew tonight


Well, they aren’t exactly how they’re sewn, but it was fun to play around with the colors


And then I headed out.

I spent the afternoon with my mom, stopped at home (power was on when I got back here at 3:15 pm. New transformer is on a different pole behind my neighbor’s house) and then picked up a very good friend who is in town for a few days for business.

No pics were taken, but Beth got the grand tour of Pittsburgh via automobile. I picked her up at the Westin and we drove down the point, then up through PPG Place past the ice rink, then over to Sixth and up to Grant to see the Steel building, courthouse and old jail. We then looped onto the Liberty Bridge and up McArdle Roadway to Mt. Washington. I pointed out some significant landmarks, then we went down to the South Side to peer at the Steelers/Pitt football complex then zipped over to Oakland where we drove past the chunk of outfield wall from Forbes Field, past Phipps, back through CMU to Forbes, up to Fifth by Heinz Chapel, then back to the South Side where we met up with the Hubster for dinner at Primanti Brothers. Whew!

It was fun, though. And yeah, I’m realizing just how much I talk. Too much, actually. I need to work on that. (Sorry, Beth! Sometimes I just don't know when to shut up!)

So that’s about it from here. Let’s all appreciate the Internets and Electricity. It can get awfully dark and boring without them!

4 comments:

turtlegirl76 said...

You know, you really should read yesterday's blog post on my site. Just sayin'.

You know, it's not every day that you hear of the power company being proactive. That's good news.

Sarah said...

It's really good that they decided to take care of that transformer yesterday, before the storm last night! I'm sure if they hadn't, it would have been a while before anyone came out to address the problem.

Stay warm today! (And I might add that I've very jealous on a day like today that you get to work from home!)

Jenn said...

It's never a good sign when an actual truck shows up at your house. I've never even seen anyone come around to read the meters! At least they fixed it before the ice hit!

Messie said...

Its a good thing they took care of that. It looked dangerous. And it kinda allowed for a freebee day- not so much work? That's always good.