{"id":32526,"date":"2025-03-09T05:00:20","date_gmt":"2025-03-09T09:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=32526"},"modified":"2025-03-08T21:48:37","modified_gmt":"2025-03-09T03:48:37","slug":"oh-damn-the-powers-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/09\/oh-damn-the-powers-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh, Damn the Power\u2019s Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

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We now return you to your original program already in progress.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So yesterday Ithaqua, the Great Old One known as the “Wind-Walker” knocked out my electric power and internet connection.\u00a0 What a vindictive jerk.\u00a0 Well, the generator kicked in but it caught me flat-footed.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t loaded my post for yesterday or the night before\u2019s, \u201cPhoto of the Day.\u201d\u00a0 So, apologies.<\/p>\n

I went through the whole dance.\u00a0 I charged up an old flip phone I keep for just such situations and tried calling up my truly useless power utility and my truly useless cable company.\u00a0 And spent about fifteen minutes with each trying to escape from their AI and get information from an actual human being.\u00a0 Completely in vain.\u00a0 The power company told me it was after their business hours so no actual humans at all.\u00a0 The cable company had humans but they are actually worse than the AI.\u00a0 They know nothing, they care about nothing and they sound so bored all I could think of was the, \u201csee no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil\u201d monkeys.\u00a0 I noticed that both outfits promised to call me when they knew something about restoration of service.<\/p>\n

Power returned almost 24 hours later around 3pm today.\u00a0 And ten minutes after restoration the flip phone rang and both companies called to say that service would soon be restored.\u00a0 Words failed me.<\/p>\n

Being cut off from television, the internet and any news of the outside world was at first annoying.\u00a0 But by late this morning I think I was starting to enjoy it.\u00a0 I watched a movie on DVD (Mel Gibson\u2019s Hamlet) and some music on an MP3 player (Traveling Wilburys) and felt relief that I wasn\u2019t entranced on YouTube or X.\u00a0 But all too soon Camera Girl saw a convoy of utility trucks heading down our road.\u00a0 So, she dared me to get up and follow them.\u00a0 I drove about a mile up the road and there was a truly colossal white pine being sawn into manageable pieces and stacked by the side of the road.\u00a0 An hour later the generator cut out and the phone started ringing and civilization had me by the throat again.\u00a0 Oh Ithaqua, we hardly knew ye.<\/p>\n

So now I have to find out what I missed.\u00a0 As far as I can tell, nothing.\u00a0 Democrats prancing around trying not to look irrelevant, ridiculous and despicable, but failing.\u00a0 Trump and his merry band running around breaking stuff and calling out world leaders as losers.\u00a0 Cable news companies firing their half-witted staff by the bucketful.\u00a0 Check, check, check.\u00a0 So basically, nothing happened while I was hurled back into the nineteenth century (well, kinda).<\/p>\n

But there was some progress.\u00a0 We got some warmer (if windier) weather and the majority of the ice melted off the bottom driveway.\u00a0 So, I went out there with various shovels and hammer-sliced it off the blacktop and piled it on the grass.\u00a0 And I went to see what condition the west field was in.\u00a0 It\u2019s the wettest area of the fields and in spring it can be 6-8 inches of mud that makes it a bad idea to walk on it.\u00a0 But it\u2019s drying nicely and maybe tomorrow I might go back there and cut down the older raspberry canes and put down fertilizer for their spring growth.\u00a0 And I took out a pair of binoculars and looked at the trees and sure enough the buds are ready to bust open anytime now.\u00a0 So, ignoring the world for a day was a great thing as far I can tell.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But I\u2019m back and ready to chronicle whatever tomfoolery the usual suspects get up to.\u00a0 But it\u2019s good to see the world is finally shrugging off winter and Dunwich is ready for spring, renewal, new life and all that crap.<\/p>\n