Reporting Live from a Borders somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line:

Today I can declare from personal experience that blackouts on the Eastern seaboard suck approximately 153x MORE than blackouts in Hawaii. And it's not the cold, the rain, or the wind (ON THE TOPIC OF WIND: seriously, I've weathered THREE hurricanes in Hawaii and Japan combined, and a TROPICAL DEPRESSION wandering up from the Gulf of Mexico is what sends the most outdoor furniture/tree limbs/other miscellaneous debris whipping around so that I can't even stick my nose out the door on THE FIRST DAY. That's right: FIRST. DAY. As in THERE WAS MORE THAN ONE DAY OF THIS mother- weather pattern/system/I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE OFFICIAL TERM IS AND I DON'T CARE. !!!!)

Ahem. What was I talking about? Ah, yes... IN ADDITION to all the other factors outlined above, the neighborhood grid got knocked out ON THE FIRST DAY. Why? So, how long is it going to take to get on-line again? Wait, all the businesses around us have got their power back, why haven't we? Okay, it's night now, at least it's not freezing out...

The morning of the SECOND DAY: Hey, that neighborhood ACROSS THE STREET has power now, why not us? Hrmph, FINE, I'll just take an ice-cold shower since I smell and I don't want to embarrass myself, even though there's no way in hell I'm going out in that mess.

The afternoon of the SECOND DAY: All right, now the people THE NEXT STREET OVER IN THE SAME DEVELOPMENT HAVE POWER. WHAT THE HORSE- IS THE HOLD UP?!

Night, SECOND DAY: OH THIS , NO HEAT, NO LIGHTS, I'M GOING TO BED.

Sylvacoer's Last Shred of Optimism: Maybe the power will be back in the morning!

MORNING OF THE THIRD DAY: HI, YOU STILL DON'T HAVE POWER, LOL.

Sylvacoer: ... FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU UUUUUUUUU-

yeeeaaahhh... all in all, 45,000+ people in the area are still without power, so my complaining is rather self-centered, but it just boggles my mind that a city with HIGHER TAX RATES THAN HONOLULU can't get its shit together when the ENTIRE STATE OF HAWAII can do the same with resources spread out over multiple islands AFTER AN EARTHQUAKE OR A FREAK WINTER STORM. And it's not like storms of this magnitude (and worse) are freak occurrences here, either. Honestly! I'm just glad it's not that dead of winter, or a lot more people would have suffered and likely died. I still don't know the official figures of yet - the battery operated radio is tuned to NPR, which only airs immediate concerns in between music broadcasts (sylva needs her Baroque, or sylva is not a happy girl).

(On the topic of NPR: the morning host of NPR was having a bit too much fun joking about playing Handel's "Water Music" at various points in his program over the last couple of days, but I guess you get your jollies where you can with classical music. I still managed to giggle about it yesterday. )

Compounding my anger, the power company "customer service" department cannot or will not give a straight answer to any of the questions outlined above - don't they understand that denying any and all information to patrons is likely to piss them off MORE than any bad news? I'm just glad it's not a government-owned company, because now there's an option to switch providers, whereas there wouldn't in a government-operated monopoly scenario (*cough*yesthisisasubtlecritiqueofgovernmentheal thcarewhydoyouask?*coughcough*).

Haaaaaahhh... IN THEORY, the power will be back TOMORROW MORNING, so we'll see how long I can camp out in this Borders before they evict me for loitering. Bleh.

This is sylvacoer, signing off in a Borders somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line - see you on the flip-side (hopefully).


EDIT, SAME DAY: As of 1200 hours, power is back, so I'll be packing up my stuff soon and going back to assess the damage in the fridge. but first, SHOWER!!!