Friday, July 25, 2014

First World Problems

Last night as I was able to watch the runway show on Project Runway, our power went out...then briefly came back on, then went out again and stayed that way.

URGGGGG.

I really like Project Runway....like seeing all the pretty and different and even usual outfits the designers come up with, so I was a little frustrated.

Contrary to reports on facebook, the power was only out for about ninety minutes.  The first reports were that three sub-stations were down and it could be two or three days to get them back on.

URGGGG.

Now I'm not worried about the runway show, but the food in my freezer!! I remember stories from my mom during Hurricane Andrew and the power outages for weeks.  During the early days people had to grill the food from their freezers and eat what they could or throw it all out.  We had this issues during Hurricane Irene.  And of course, there's Hurricane Katrina...lots of issues there with power.

We lost power quiet often when we lived in Guam.  There, it is usually only lasted three or four hours.  Those nights the food court in the BX became huge social events, since no one could cook. (I think that's why we were at the food court the night Benjamin participated in an jalapeƱo eating contest...or it could have been laziness on my part since Drew was out of town....) The only time I was really scared on Guam was when the whole island lost power due to a lady lost control of her car and ran it into the main transformer.  Most of the time the power went out due to brown tree snake getting stuck in a transformer....simple reason, but it took hours to find the right transformer, clean it, and then fix it.

We have lost power here many times - way more times that I would have thought!  No brown tree snakes here!  Last night was supposedly due to damage a storm did the night before. I think every one thought that since three sub-stations were down, it would take days to fix, but apparently they were able to fix the main station, the sub-stations came right back on. As of this morning, there were still about a thousand without power - but I think they were the same ones that lost power during the storm the night before.  Since there was already a power outage when ours went out, there were already repairmen on sight or nearby.  I guess that helped!

Whenever we had a power outage in Guam, we would get our generator out. Usually, by the time we finally did and got it all hooked up, the power came back on.  And yep! Same thing happened last night! While Drew was getting it all hooked up, the power came back on....like it was just waiting for us to be almost done...

But I'll take power any day! Yes, I love the cool air of my A/C. I love knowing my food is at the right tempature. I love being able to watch tv.  Yes, I'm a spoiled first world girl.  And I'm fine with that.

A few months ago a friend adopted two siblings from Ethiopia. I asked her how they did during the power outage.....wondered if it freaked them out.  Of course, being from a developing country, they are more use to having no electricity at all, so they really weren't bothered by it (I think it helped that they were already in bed when it went out.)  But they were concerned about all the noises they could hear now the A/C was off and not drowning out all the nature sounds.  What they really were concerned about were hyenas. 

Yes, hyenas.  They had them in their village  - so bad that NO ONE went out during dark alone.  In fact, once a packed killed their donkey.

Makes me shudder just thinking about what all these two kids and so many others had to live with - and what people live with  NOW!!

Crazy!

After hearing that story, missing part of a tv show is no longer a great concern.


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