I Like Electricity

I like Electricity

So, in an effort to avoid being robbed again I moved in with an old college buddy. He is renting a room (a small one) at a reasonable rate. The nice thing about renting with Damon is that his house is nice, has plenty of room, and he has a great entertainment system. His house is located in a neat section of Indianapolis, 75th Street and North Meridian Street.

Well, I had spent the last week of May moving in. After a full day’s work Friday and finishing up some of the move, I decided to relax Friday night. All was going well, I was playing much video games, the evening was cooling off, and the storm was not producing hail that would damage my truck. While I was playing World Of Warcraft (and talking to Luke through the game) the lights flickered, and zzzziiittt, out goes the wireless connection at 10:00pm. I figured this was no big deal, so I start playing FreeCell and watching Rush Hour 2. Right around Midnight, some crappy movie was starting on TBS when I saw the sky turn white from lightning, just about got rocked out of my chair by thunder, heard a buzzing sound, and the neighborhood went black. Meh, a night without power, there’s worse outcomes.

Saturday morning I wake up, mill around, notice no power, talk to my house mate, inspect the basement, and proceed to go to the apartment to move the last stuff and clean. The basement flooded (DAMNIT) Saturday afternoon because the power didn’t come back on and the water table kept rising 12 hours after the storm was over. We broke out the generator and got the water out of the basement.

As day turned to night, and the house stayed dark and HOT, I decided to give Indy Power and Light a call. Not only was power not on, but it might not come back till late Monday night. Needless to say, I was un-impressed. As I was already scheduled to be at a friends house to watch the fights Saturday night, I wasn’t too miffed.

As Sunday dragged on, and still no power, I got this terrible feeling that something was amiss. So I called IPL and heard that not only was power not going to be back on Sunday, that now it could be Tuesday night before power was back on. Before I went out to a sports pub to watch a second night of fights I found out another disturbing fact, even thought a hot water heater uses gas, it controls are electric. Nothing beats finding this out as one showers. We were lucky in that the controls for the heater run off of 110v and that the generator could run the sump and the hot water heater.

Monday morning sucked. Had plenty of hot water, but shaving and getting ready in the near dark is about impossible. Add on top of that, that I was butt-ass tired from having the uneasy sleep of a hot, humid, and breezeless room to sleep in (the basement was beginning to smell like mold), and Monday sucked. The call to IPL on Monday was disheartening, now it could be late Tuesday before power was back on.

I woke up this morning, Tuesday, and the lights were still out. G*DDAMNIT! I made the executive decision to not shave. I got in the shower, still groggy from the restless sleep, and thought to myself: ‘IPL gouges the crap out of it customers, where does all that money go? Surely, they have the money to pay people to fix this and buy spare parts.’ As I was cinching my belt I hear a strange noise, it was the security system beeping, why, I hadn’t heard that since Friday evening; then I heard relays starting to throw. My heart leapt, could it be?!!! Then my ceil fan started to spin, my alarm clock start flashing, the lights we on, the AC kicked on, and all was right with the world.

You don’t know how wonderful electricity until you haven’t had it for three hot and humid summer days in Indiana. I have never had so much simple joy in my entire life. (Well, there was this girl in college, but my parents read this blog every once in a great while.) Long live the AC. Long live electricity. Heck, long live IPL.

Later,

B