Power Outage

      Woke up at 5:45 this morning in pitch-darkness. I usually fall asleep with a seven-and-a-half Watt light on, but sometimes I turn it off. No blue-green glow from my nightstand clock, either, and that was unusual. Very quiet—
 
      I sat up and leaned over to the window, pulled back the curtains: dark. No security light shining on the back yard, no streetlight glow from the alley, no lights on in any house I could see.

      Picked up the flashlight I keep on my nightstand and went out to the dining room: no lights from next door on the other side, no lights out the kitchen windows. Out the front windows, the houses across the street have power. They're on a different distribution branch and it is rare for both sides of the street to lose power at the same time. 

      Went back to my room. Cellular phone service was working, so I went to our power utility's web site. Checked their outage map and we were not on it. Reported the outage, received bland, automated assurance, and Tam walked in.
T: "So, power is out.  That shoots my morning all to hell."
RX: "I reported it. Do you want coffee?"
T [cheering up a little]: "I do!"

      Of course, when I went back to the kitchen, I started to pour water in the electric teakettle. Caught myself, looked at the old teakettle that lives on a back burner and decided to wash it before use. Making coffee took a few more minutes than usual, but pretty soon we both had mugs of the stuff and the thermal carafe was nearly full with more.

     Now here I am, composing this offline as the sun begins to rise. I'm hoping Tam will let me post it using her phone as a hotspot, if power's not back on shortly. —No sooner did I ask her about that than the power came back on!