Today did not start at all well, actually it started not being at all well about 11:30-11:45pm or so last night. The power went out. It is amazing how fast one wakes up when one's CPAP stops working. So up we got, me clicking the touch lights we have all over the house for light until I could get to the oil lamps. Hubby had his flashlights, which helped because I couldn't find any of the flame sticks or matches! He finally found a working lighter, so we had light (and I will spend this weekend finding all the matches and flame sticks and get them back where they belong).
Tried calling the local number for the power company to find out what was going on. It was disconnected. Called the operator, she said to call 411 SIGH! The number they gave us was the wrong one, they at least had an Idaho number, which turned out to be for Bonner County up north of us. THEY at least had a number we could call, so we did and there was a message the power outage covered of good chunk of Moscow. So we tried to get a local radio station, but the one I listen to was down, we couldn't get the university's station at home (we are in a dead spot for it) and the only stations I could get were out of Spokane. We couldn't listen to the scanner as it isn't battery powered (now on the list to buy, battery powered scanner) so we decided to jump in the car and drive around. About 2/3 of the town was out, pretty eerie, tho it was also very pretty with the bright moon.
Got home and found the router and wireless still had power (uninterruptable power supply) so used the laptop to hop online, but couldn't find anything on the power company's website about outages. Hubby called again and this time they said there were 6500 customers affected (I strongly suspect it was way more then that) and it would be about 3 hours until the power was back on. So back to bed we went hooking the CPAPs up to the deep cycle marine battery and converter we have just for this type of occasion (and so we can go camping). Finally got back to sleep. Got up this morning, reset clocks, nuked the leftover coffee and made a fresh pot.
To further make things a pain in the Gazoo, some idiot up in Plummer cut the phone/DSL line this morning. I was checking my mail on the laptop when the internet stopped working. Hubby checked the router and the wireless, those were working fine. So I gave up and finally got to work, where I found out the lines were down, so that was explained. Hubby called a bit later to say he talked with the phone guy we saw up the hill from us this morning and that is where we found out the break was. The guy said we'll probably be down about 24 hours, it is affecting 100,000+ customers and the phone company is very, very unhappy. Seems that these line cuts almost always happen up around Plummer. So phone service is hit and miss for long distance and the university is running on a backup wireless system, which means things are hit and miss computerwise. Newest note from computer services for the U is that the phone company is hoping to have service back up about noon or so. We'll see.
Oh well, at least we are personally prepared for outages, tho they are a pain. Hubby says it isn't paranoia when things do happen you've prepared for. We have plenty of candles and oil lamps for light, the Dragon (kerosene heater) for heat, the butane burner I got for doing stirfries for cooking, a battery powered radio (which is also solar and a crank powered), a couple big jugs of water and canned and dry goods to avoid opening the fridge. The only thing we really need to get is either a big Malita drip that makes more then 1 cup at a time or a camp coffee pot (tho I'm giving serous consideration to lobbying for a French press, I hate perked coffee and the Malitas you have to stand over to keep adding enough water).
Tried calling the local number for the power company to find out what was going on. It was disconnected. Called the operator, she said to call 411 SIGH! The number they gave us was the wrong one, they at least had an Idaho number, which turned out to be for Bonner County up north of us. THEY at least had a number we could call, so we did and there was a message the power outage covered of good chunk of Moscow. So we tried to get a local radio station, but the one I listen to was down, we couldn't get the university's station at home (we are in a dead spot for it) and the only stations I could get were out of Spokane. We couldn't listen to the scanner as it isn't battery powered (now on the list to buy, battery powered scanner) so we decided to jump in the car and drive around. About 2/3 of the town was out, pretty eerie, tho it was also very pretty with the bright moon.
Got home and found the router and wireless still had power (uninterruptable power supply) so used the laptop to hop online, but couldn't find anything on the power company's website about outages. Hubby called again and this time they said there were 6500 customers affected (I strongly suspect it was way more then that) and it would be about 3 hours until the power was back on. So back to bed we went hooking the CPAPs up to the deep cycle marine battery and converter we have just for this type of occasion (and so we can go camping). Finally got back to sleep. Got up this morning, reset clocks, nuked the leftover coffee and made a fresh pot.
To further make things a pain in the Gazoo, some idiot up in Plummer cut the phone/DSL line this morning. I was checking my mail on the laptop when the internet stopped working. Hubby checked the router and the wireless, those were working fine. So I gave up and finally got to work, where I found out the lines were down, so that was explained. Hubby called a bit later to say he talked with the phone guy we saw up the hill from us this morning and that is where we found out the break was. The guy said we'll probably be down about 24 hours, it is affecting 100,000+ customers and the phone company is very, very unhappy. Seems that these line cuts almost always happen up around Plummer. So phone service is hit and miss for long distance and the university is running on a backup wireless system, which means things are hit and miss computerwise. Newest note from computer services for the U is that the phone company is hoping to have service back up about noon or so. We'll see.
Oh well, at least we are personally prepared for outages, tho they are a pain. Hubby says it isn't paranoia when things do happen you've prepared for. We have plenty of candles and oil lamps for light, the Dragon (kerosene heater) for heat, the butane burner I got for doing stirfries for cooking, a battery powered radio (which is also solar and a crank powered), a couple big jugs of water and canned and dry goods to avoid opening the fridge. The only thing we really need to get is either a big Malita drip that makes more then 1 cup at a time or a camp coffee pot (tho I'm giving serous consideration to lobbying for a French press, I hate perked coffee and the Malitas you have to stand over to keep adding enough water).
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