Scheduled outage

Yesterday the electricity lines company had what they called a “scheduled power outage” in our area for an entire day. The fact that it was planned didn’t make it any easier to deal with, but I found ways to minimise the disruption.

We received a notice in the mail dated May 28, which was unusual in itself because we hardly ever get any mail. This actually made it more noticeable. The outage was to be from around 8am to 3pm, or the next day if weather didn’t cooperate.

Monday night, I double checked the letter. I was planning on making a trip to Pukekohe the next day to fill part of the time. Tuesday was also rubbish day, so I planned on getting up a little early yesterday morning to get it all together for Nigel to drop off at the kerb on his way to work.

So, Wednesday dawned, I got up and got the rubbish ready, then sent Nigel on his way. I came back into the house to feed the furbabies their breakfast, realised I needed to get some more dog food from downstairs, got back to the kitchen and the lights went out. It was 8:01am.

I’d forgotten all about the outage, so I hadn’t had my shower, and with no power that meant no water. Uh oh. I fed the furbabies and tried to figure out what I was going to do.

A few household chores—emptying the dishwasher, taking recyclables out to the bin (that’s collected next week), and a little surfing the web on my phone (since we had no power, there was also no wifi).

I tried the tap, and there was water. I guessed that either they’d put a generator on the water pump for our area, or the shutdown was very specific to our area.

That meant I could have a cold water wash at the bathroom sink (being a cool day, I was confident this wasn’t too risky…), so I did that and off I went to Pukekohe.

When I got out on the road, I saw the workers, and that the work was related to the new subdivision, so it’s possible it was a very local outage.

In Pukekohe, my first objective was lunch because I didn’t have any before I left (I hadn’t wanted to open the fridge at home—that’s my story and I’m sticking to it). I picked up a tool for an upcoming project, then exchanged a couple things I picked up the other day, and then some things from the grocery store. That last one was related to the day because I bought a small bag of ice.

Once home, around 2pm, I put some of the ice in a bowl in the fridge, and the rest in the freezer, both to bump up the cold. Then—nothing. I had nothing else planned.

At 3:31 the power finally came back on.

Because there was no power, and so, no Internet, I nixed the idea of blogging in the day time (I wasn’t sure how much battery power my laptop had, and, anyway, I usually need to check something or other online. By the time evening rolled around, I just didn’t have it in me to do any posts.

This was a good thing. I’d written two posts the day before, neither of which I wanted to publish. They were too mean, too mocking, too pointless. But in light of some of my posts lately about LGBT+ people, the irritation bordering on anger was justified. I did a third post that was similarly too harsh, but that one may reappear in an edited/rewritten form at some point.

So, the power outage was planned, and so, too, was my blogging outage. I know the latter was for the best, and I presume the first was, too. Sometimes these things are necessary.