Tag: electricity

Days of Fire

Fires are raging to the south of us, in Los Angeles county. I am in the county just north, Ventura. We had fires here that burnt out a lot of the areas with which I am familiar. Several years ago my in-laws were evacuated and showed up on our doorstep at 1:00 a.m. Josh’s brother’s family were evacuated from their canyon and are now back home, but areas around them are devastated and many people they know are homeless, having lost everything. If we didn’t have family here, or Josh wasn’t restricted by work where he can live, we would be long gone as I am so sick of this. It is only going to get worse, IMO.

That said, the local electric company, SCE, turned off our electricity to help prevent downed power lines – if they happen – from sparking and setting off fires. These are called “PSPS” shut-offs – public safety power shut-off or shutdown.

It’s a smart thing to do as down lines in a dry, dry area are often responsible for fires. One of our current fires is apparently the work of an arsonist – beyond my comprehension.

We had no electricity for 2 days, and while it wasn’t especially hard on me as there is a lot I do without the need of electricity except for light, Josh wasn’t able to work or play very much. Sleep from stress is difficult for all of us – the back of the brain and the ear are tuned to hear alarms of all sorts. The electricity was shut off in the middle of the night, and last night turned back on.

This was a bit of a financial loss in terms of food. 2 days without electricity means lost frozen food and fresh. Luckily, food is still in the area – we have 6 grocery stores nearby – and roads and transport are not down or blocked. Hot water continued throughout the 2 days. Gas for cooking and heating water, thankfully, but not for heat as the furnace requires electricity to start up. Here in CA where we are, cold nights exist but are not as if we were in upstate NY without electricity or oil to burn in the dead of a winter’s blizzard.

The winds are expected to pick up again, and I expect fires are going to continue to start or burn unabated. We are going to find a generator so we can have some electricity to keep from losing perishables and have access to phones and such in times of emergency. Meanwhile, all we can do is hunker down, or when in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. Or:

What else can you do? Life is so fragile but in times of safety and comfort, we forget it so easily.

Blown Away

There is an expression, “An ill wind blows no one any good” that comes to mind today.  Perhaps we had an ill wind; perhaps not.

We had no electricity for two days.  The reason was the fierce winds flying through drought-ridden Southern California.  We didn’t get fires, although other places did.  Winds were recorded at up to 38 mph in my area.  No trees fell, luckily, but a few branches and dirt are all over the place now.  Our electric company, So Cal Edison and others, have a program called PSPS – Public Service Power Shut-off.  The purpose of this program is to keep power lines downed by winds from starting the types of fires that rage through dry country and burn entire towns, such as Paradise, CA, a few years ago.  Inconvenient if you like electricity, but better than burnt-out cities.

Living without electricity has become an almost eerie event.  By this I mean we are so lost without it – and without the internet!  It is as if you are picked up and plopped down onto a desert island.  We passed the time reading books by flashlight and Kindle-light.  Fortunately, the electricity doesn’t power our water or water heater.  Our stove top works with gas, which we can light with a match, even though the ovens are electric.  We also had to do dishes by hand and are now, with the electric back on, have access to washing our clothes, our dishwasher, and so on.  The phone service, though, was delayed by a few hours, and with that, the internet.

Despite a lack of electricity, I managed to do some rather bad watercolors by flashlight, and cleaned up some piddly crap.

My life is back to normal.

Life is back to normal, too, in Washington, DC!  I hope that our new President can turn around this country’s divisiveness, handle the pandemic, and lead us out of the mess of the past four years.  I hope we find a return to cooperation rather than “me, me, me” and “no, no, no”.

TTFN.

 

Life by Kindle Light

I was an English major in college, specializing in nothing particular, but rather enjoying it as the profs were fascinating.  Have you ever taken a course on Shakespeare taught from a Freudian viewpoint?  Enacted Chaucer in the dialect of the time?  Well, you get the idea.  But if the truth is told, I am truly a reader of modern trash more than classics, and I often wonder about my tastes.  It is only in the past few years that I have returned to more classical literature, admittedly in small doses, and of the early 1800s British variety.  This means Wuthering Heights and Jane Austen and Frankenstein.  The cruelty in Bronte’s book was stunning – I remember the hanging of the puppies, done out of boredom, with horror.  Shelley’s monster is heartbreaking.  And Austen?  She is fluff by comparison, with a lightness that is like a summer breeze that can roll into capricious bursts.

It is quite funny to read Pride and Prejudice on my Kindle.  A novel written with a quill and iron gall ink being read on an electronic device is quite a shift in time.

And then the electricity fails mid-afternoon.  Sewing is out of the question (though I could use the treadle or hand-crank sewing machines), as is baking (I wanted a coffee cake).  I went out to the side patio to listen to an audio book and comb out one of the dogs.

No electricity!

What do you do when it gets dark?  All the USB devices were down to their last jolts of current.  As light faded, I found my little section of town was dark, but two doors down the lamps were bright.  I had a flashlight or two, and I had candles.  Out came the candles, out came the Kindle, and on with Jane Austen, Darcy, and Miss Bennet!   Wandering around the house, I found my way with the light of my Kindle, not wanting to drip wax on the floor or carpet, much less myself.

When the esposo came home, it was pitch black.  We went out to dinner – who wants to scramble eggs using a flashlight to see by (or a candle) over a gas flame? Off to the other world to dine, and then return, once more, to our black hole.

And then to bed with the Kindles, to read Jane Austen and Terry Pratchett, to remember where the flashlights were, and hope there is electricity by dawn after a projection by the electric company that civilization would be restored by noon the next day.

And so it passed . . . the electricity returned in the middle of the night, the lights went on, the devices squawked, and the candles were, once more, obsolete.