Again

by Rob

The power came back on at about 3:00 AM on Thursday. At that point, it had been off for about 16 hours. In light of the fact that the power company had to replace two broken poles, a couple of transformers, and right or repair several others poles, 16 hours is a fairly impressive turn around.

This time, the tree that came down was in front of Jim and Kim's house. It's a hot spot, really. Over the past few years several of the trees that have come down have been in that area. I can't imagine how frustrating it is for them, not only that we keep facing these power outages, but that they so often have the trees and power lines laying right in front of their house.

The biggest hassle for us during this latest outage was the rain. The water came into our basement, and although I was able to keep up with it by using towels and buckets, it was especially difficult to work with only a flashlight. Once the power came back, it was nice to be able to see. I didn't even bother plugging in the wet vac at that point, since I had been able to to keep things under control using the towels.

Looking ahead, I can't decide whether to be mad or lighthearted. Frankly, I can justify both. One perspective is that we will not be able to do anything about this situation, and the trees will keep falling. If that's true, we might as well start a pool and try to have some fun, guessing when and where the next one will fall. The opposite view is that there are times when we can't take no for an answer, and the claim that nothing can be done about a situation is simply avoidance by those who would rather not be bothered. If I, or anyone else, wants to take up the cause of pushing for action through legal means, it's going to take a determined mindset. Such a battle might seem like an expense of energy (and money) that isn't really warranted, but if at some point, someone gets hurt or worse by one of these incidents, the angry energy for the battle will be to be too little too late.