Power Outage — Part IV

February 28, 2010 — Checked my email and read the Globe on Pam and Roger's computers. Possibly looking forward to another day hanging out at the mall, taking in a movie I might not care about, I'm starting to get a little depressed. I've now been homeless going into a third day. I could have stayed with Pam and Roger, but I wanted to be home when the power finally came on. Calling my home phone from my cell phone generated a canned message from the phone company, not the message recorded on my phone which would require power. That wasn't encouraging, but I told myself that's not necessarily proof the power is off.

Back in Manchester around 10 a.m., the power was still off. I wasn't really surprised. I went back to the mall, this time without the laptop because I had gotten all my computing done at Pam and Roger's. Had lunch, came back home again, house now at 44 degrees. I really didn't feel like seeing my third movie in three days, and I was trying to think of some other way to kill time. I was rummaging around the closet off my living room at about 1:20 p.m. when I heard voices. What is that, I thought. Then I realized the voices were in the house. It was my TV in the den. HOORAY! I have power! I couldn't believe it for a moment.

The house was slowly warming up. The power originally went off the night before my normal grocery shopping day, so my food supply was pretty well exhausted, and I had thrown away what little was left in the refrigerator. So I went shopping, deciding to get something for supper and a few non-perishables. I didn't want to push my luck. Sometimes after a major power outage where there's been extensive damage, there can be instability and the power can go off again. That didn't happen.

Looking back on the past three days, I realize I suffered nothing worse then annoyance and inconvenience. No trees crashed through my house or flattened my car as happened to some folks. No damage was incurred due to the long outage except for loss of food. My PC, TV, furnace and all my electronics came through unscathed. I got a brief taste of what it is to be homeless and uprooted, and I now have even greater sympathy for those who experience this for prolonged periods.