I woke up around 3:45 and realized (after a few disoriented minutes) that I had no power. The power at my house is normally *very* reliable. I looked outside and didn't notice anything unusual, so I turned off the beeping UPS units and went back to bed. Around 6:20, I woke up to the smell of burning plastic. I panicked a bit, since it looked a little smoky outside. I determined it wasn't my house on fire, and since I still didn't have power, I grabbed my BlackBerry to check the news. This is why I had no power, and why I smelled smoke. Fire. Big fire.
I used to drive past that building every day on my way to work at my old job. It's about 4 blocks from my house. It's looked more or less abandoned for years, with lots of broken windows and gated doors. Kind of a creepy place. I called John, who was at his house (with power) and he watched the news for me. They said they were evacuating a 5-block area, but that appears to have been the 5-blocks on the other side of the fire from my house. I did have some bits of charred stuff in my yard yesterday morning, though.
Once the news reported that the fire was under control, I decided it was safe to leave the cats here, so I closed all the windows, and went to work. Once I got there, I found out that something "not good" had happened overnight, and since I was one of the first people on my team in the office, I got yelled at for something that clearly wasn't our fault. As other people came in, they also got an earful from various people. Our boss wasn't in so he couldn't run interference for us, unfortunately. We mitigated the problem as best we could within The Rules (that some of the unhappy people put in place), and we'll deal with the rest of the fallout next week. My co-worker, D. is going out of the country for 2 weeks starting Tuesday. I'm *not* looking forward to my July. :-(
On the plus side, we got to leave at 3:00, because of the holiday, which was good. I stopped at the store and got some extra kitty carriers, since I realized yesterday morning that I have 5 cats and only 2 carriers. This works fine for vet visits, but not so much if I'd had to evacuate the furries. I came home, reset the clock on the microwave, took a much-needed nap, and started watching Star Wars for the billionth time on Spike (I want my CSI!!!). Around 7:00 the power went out - AGAIN! I called the automated outage number and they said the outage was due to emergency equipment repairs, presumably damage from the fire. I'm glad I took up knitting, because it's one thing I can do without electricity. I did make more progress on Stealth Project 2. I'm slowing getting to half-way.
The power came back on after about an hour, and has been fine since. It was never out long enough for anything to melt in the freezer, which is good. I checked when I got home from work, and the ice cubes in the bowl weren't any more stuck together than they'd have been after a defrosting cycle. Yay! I killed the batteries in the answering machine, though. Maybe I'll get Blue to record the new outgoing message. Rowr? :)
At any rate, Thursday is over, it's Friday and I'm not at work. I have no real plans for the day. I've already finished all the shredding (sorry, Emma), and I'm going to head to the sewing room to do something. I have some pillowcases to embroider and I figure I can work on Stealth Project 2 while those are going. We'll see what else I get into while I'm in there. I'll post pictures of what I can.
Happy 4th of July!!
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