Frabjous Times


Outage (2)

Midafternoon The first thing I noticed, in retrospect, was weird keyboard lockups at work, probably a sign of power glitches. Then a little after 4 the lights flickered and sounds of dismay came from every cubicle. It tried to come up a half dozen times in the next 45 minutes, at which time I packed it in in drove home. As last time, the first thing to do was to haul out the generator in order to power up the essentials.
6 pm Mobile phone coverage is spotty. I finally got a voicemail from Pam telling me she was headed for a coworker's place in Lower Manhattan. I haven't been able to call back yet, but sent a few SMS msgs, not sure whether she knows how to pick them up though.
8:30 pm got through to Pam who had walked down to Battery Park City from midtown. She said she was going to stay there overnight with her friend, maybe have a can of soup for dinner. (I'd had some cereal myself.) Fielded a couple of calls from friends and family who were wondering how we were doing.
10 pm Generator runs out of gas. Rather than use my last drop, I decided to leave it be for now and run again in the morning if the need arose. Plugged the fridge back into the wall anticipating that the power might come on again soon. On the radio they mentioned that other parts of New Jersey were starting to get electricity again. Instead of going up to bed, I decided to try to sleep on the sofa in the living room which is a few degrees cooler.
1:15 am Lights in the dining room woke me up to let me know that the power back on here, although apparently not in NYC yet. Crawled back upstairs and clicked the air conditioning on to get some sleep.
Originally published: 2003/08/15 06:39:47