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.