An Adventurous Evening

Last night proved to be more than we anticipated. Since I work tonight and Saturday, we had decided to switch our family night to Thursday night, the bummer of course being that the boys still had to get to bed at a decent time plus get their evening showers since there is school the next day. So we ate dinner and shooed Collin into the shower with Brian in hot pursuit. We had plans to watch a dvd in our pj's and cuddle on the couch in a blanket. Sounded like the perfect thing to do on such a rainy, stormy night. Brian was in the shower and we were right on target for starting the movie in time for the boys to still make it to bed on time when we lost power in half the house. Unfortunately for Brian part of half the house included the bathroom he was showering in. He did, however enjoy finishing he shower with a flashlight shining into the shower. Actually that turned out to be lots of fun for him!


So now, Steve is in the garage trying to figure out what's going on. None of the breakers had been tripped and flipping them off and then back on wasn't doing anything. He is puzzling over this as we are taking stock in what we do have power-wise. Master bathroom, check. Ours and the boys bedroom, check. Allison's room, nope. Main bathroom, nope. Wipes warmer, check. Lamp in Allison's room, check. Kitchen and dining room, nope. Family room, check. Living room, nope. Oven, check. Refrigerator, nope. Furnace, nope. Washer and dryer, check. Really there was no rhyme or reason to this. It wasn't this breaker and not that one. The dvd player was out so no movie, the phone was out, the computer was out. But the cable was working. It was just plain weird.


Then some of the lights were trying to come back on and were flickering and very little light was coming out. That's when we were more concerned about the possibility of a short in a wire and the possibility of the house catching on fire while we were sleeping. So we called an electrician (with the cell as the land line was not working). He checked on everything and said that it was a wire from the road to the box that was not working and therefore it was PSE's problem.


Surprisingly someone from PSE came out about half hour later with light's flashing and checked it out for us. Then he sat in his nice big truck in the cul de sac for an hour while he waited for someone else to come with the equipment needed to temporarily fix the problem. I can only imagine what our neighbors were thinking. Here it was 10 at night and we have had this huge truck in our driveway just idling for an hour. One neighbor even called to find out what was up but since our phone wasn't working I didn't get the message till this morning. It turns out one of the 120 amp wires going from the street to our box is damaged which caused a spike in the power and then it corroded the wire and that's when we lost power. The hooked up the big box to our electrical box outside and next week will have to dig up the wire to figure out where the problem is and replace the wire. But in the meantime our power is back on, we just can't use everything all at once or we will again have problems. It ended up being quite the adventure to say the least!