Outages By the Dozen

Can you think of anything worse than a blackout - or a power failure, as it is now semi-euphemistically called? Two power failures, of course. But how about twelve power failures?

My mother and I have had the electricity go out in our house twelve times - sometimes for a few minutes, other times for a few hours - since that start of the year. I've repeatedly had to call our electric company to report these outages, and because all but one of our telephones is electrically operated and the one phone that isn't - an old Western Electric wall phone in the basement - has rotary dialing, I have to call with my cell phone. I seemingly use more of my airtime calling the electric company than anyone else.

The first outage occurred on February 25 at around 7 PM during a snowstorm. We'd had power failures before, but this was the first time it ever went off in a snowstorm. Our electricity had made it through the Blizzard of '96, but we weren't so lucky this time. But power was restored in just under three hours.

The next four outages came during the nor'easter of March 13 and 14. Number two occurred at 4:30 PM on March 13 for a second, and number three occurred at 10 PM that night and lasted five minutes. But a surge of electricity that brightened my room twenty minutes later signaled the start of another power failure - number four for the year. (It was during this part of the nor'easter that a tree fell on our garage roof.) I went to bed eventually, leaving the lamp turned on.

The power came back on at 3:15 AM, March 14 . . . then went off again two seconds later. That's five times for the year. The power was restored at around 5:30 AM, but the cable service went out.

All of those blackouts were understandable, given the inclement weather. But here's where it gets ridiculous.

By 6 PM, March 15, the cable connection had gone out twice and stayed off for an eternity in both cases, but service had been restored by 5:40 PM. (I alluded to this earlier on this blog.) The worst of the storm was over. In fact, it was only raining moderately by now. But the power went off again at about 6:10 PM - outage number six - and stayed off for over an hour an half. I thought that was definitely it for while.

Outage number seven occurred on March 28 at about 10:35 PM during a heavy rainfall. I was in the middle of preparing for a temporary job I'd just been hired for. Power was restored fifteen minutes later.

Outage number eight occurred on April 16 at 8:30 PM when I was at the computer - the only time it went off this year while I was on the PC. (I don't remember what the weather was like.) I had just published a blog post and was trying to provide a link to it on Facebook when the computer suddenly had trouble connecting to anything. The connection struggled, and finally the whole house went black. I went downstairs to get a flashlight and call the electric company, and by the time I got my cell phone out five minutes later, the power was back on. Good thing I published my post just before the outage; I might have lost it.

And then I would have lost it, if you get my drift.

Outage number nine was at 4 PM on April 26, a rainy day, while I was lying down in my room with no lights on; I wasn't feeling well. I only realized the power went off when I turned over and saw that the face on my digital clock was blank. That lasted two minutes, but outage number ten occurred at 5:25 that evening while my mother and I were getting dinner ready. That lasted about ten minutes.

Outage number eleven occurred at 1:30 AM, May 3. It was an abnormally hot night punctuated by thunderstorms, I couldn't sleep, and my fan was going. When the fan went off suddenly, I realized what had happened and felt like crying. But the power returned in five minutes.

Ironically, I slept through outage number twelve. I got up at 7 AM on May 8 to go to the bathroom, and went back to bed and fell asleep. When I woke up a short time later, I saw my clock flashing. I turned on my TV set, which always resets itself to Channel 2 (you have to keep it on Channel 4 to get cable service) after a power failure, just to make sure there was nothing wrong with my clock. Sure enough, the TV was set to Channel 2. The weather report for May 8 called for rain and wind, but none of this had even started before 10 AM.

The windy weekend we just had in New Jersey caused the lights in our house to flicker once, but surprisingly, the power stayed on after the Saturday morning outage was over. Not that I wasn't worried, though. In fact, on Saturday night, as I was watching a movie on TV, I kept wondering if I was going to get to see the end of it. But even without the threat of inclement weather, it seems that the slightest wind or rainfall can trigger a power failure on my block, and I can't understand why our electric company can't make the power more reliable. Sometimes the power goes off on a calm, sunny day. We haven't been able to go through a whole month without a blackout since February, and more recently, we haven't even made it through a whole week without one.

One thing's for sure - I'm getting sick and tired of resetting all the electric clocks in the house all the time.