Monday, August 13, 2007

Thank God for Electricity

I was in Columbia, MO, last night for the installation of Thom Smith as associate pastor of Christ our King Presbyterian Church. After the service I was planning on staying the night with the pastor and driving back to STL in the morning.

But then the phone calls came. The air condioner wasn't working at home. The breakers kept flipping. I walked my wife through the fix for that on the phone. Fifteen minutes later she called and said the kitchen sink was backed up. She couldn't fix that herself so I got in the car and drove home. I got home about a quarter to midnight and began working on the kitchen sink.

At about 12:45 AM I noticed on the weather radar that there was a huge thunderstorm approaching from the NW. I could already hear rumblings and the wind had suddenly picked up outside. So I went around the house unplugging the computers and stuff. I had just pulled the plug on the Xbox 360 when the lights went out. I twas about 1 AM. I forgot to have a flashlight ready so I groped around and finally found one.

Of course, no power meant no air condo for the night. And no fans. Blah. Yuck. Not fun.

Got up this morning and it was still off. Bummer. There's nothing to do with no power. No computer. No TV. No opening the fridge. No ice. No cold water. No fun at all.

I was dreading two or three days without power because I had heard that there were about 35,000 homes out in the STL area. This seems to be happening once or twice a year these days. Last year about this time we were without power for 4 days and the temperature was close to 100 every day. What a mess.

Unbelievably, the power came back on this morning at 10:20 AM. Amazing. Without electricity nothing seems right, everything is off kilter and out of wack.

“I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison" - W. C. Fields.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was up too. Our power went out when the rain and lightening came through at 2:00. I was thinking we may have to pack up and head to Michigan considering it is supposed to be 105 tomorrow. But to my great surprise the power came back on at 5:30. Gulf drive seems to be the very last place that gets service in the city, having outages of 8 and 7 days (also 3 and 4 days) in the past 14 months. I slept a lot better after 5:30 for more reasons than one.

Anonymous said...

That was a scary storm. I was up a little later and then was stuck not being able to get to sleep because it was like reporters were outside the window snapping flash pictures of me! Loud thunder, and almost continuous lightning; amazing. I was praying that we wouldn't lose power and then I was reminded of Luther's storm experience. Anyway, the storm rumbles kept setting off my neighbors motion detector light and so the light kept popping on and startling me. I've never seen storms like these in Missouri before.

Jeff Meyers said...

I think the prolonged, oddly hot weather makes for these bizarre storms. But I'm not sure. It was creepy. I kept hearing odd noises all through the storm. The wind was acting nutty and the atmosphere as a whole was just weird.