OT A night in a hotel not two miles from home

Yesterday afternoon, my wife and I returned from a grocery
trip (big, in order to restock our freezer) only to discover
that our power went out. Bobby was at the annual Labor Day
Weekend Carnival that our small Mayberry like city in Maryland
has every year (this is the 60th year).

Power goes out a fair amount here, so we did not think much
about it. We did, however, plan on opening the freezer and
refrigerator just once, to be safe.

I called PEPCO to report the outage. They said it would be
fixed in 4 hours. OK, we sat in the rapidly heating house,
went to the Carnival, etc. Turns out a transformer on our
street blew and we are one of only 7 homes (out of 15 on the
street) in our entire city having the problem.

At 5, we returned. I called PEPCO again and now they said
power would not return until tomorrow. We hustled to get the
dogs to the air conditioned kennel we used before it's 6 PM
closing (fortunately, they only had two opening left due to
Labor Day travel) and we were lucky.

After an evening at the Carnival (watching 35 young ladies vie
for the Miss America eligible title of Miss Labor Day Carnival
Queen) we went home at 9 PM to pack and go to our
guaranteed reservation at the Marriott that is 1.70 miles from
our house.

It's gets worse and better. I am in the Marriott Rewards
program with a few points in my account. We got there at 10
PM. My early request for two non smoking, adjoining rooms
presented a small problem at this late time. Hot, tired,
ok....I was also cranky, Marriott did the right thing
immediately and upgraded us to two suites on the Concierge
level. We go up and....the keys don't work.

I come down and get new keys. They work. It's now almost 11
and we are all hot and thirsty. I go downstairs for a couple
of cold BlueMoon beers for me and drinks for the wife and son.
No bartender in the bar. Finally, she comes out and gives me
my two beers that with a 2 buck tip comes to $10. I go to buy
the soda and water by the desk. The manager sees me and says
"no charge Mr. Rudd, you had to come down for the keys and
everything else. By the way, I saw you in the bar and we are
crediting your account for the beers."

At 4 AM, my cell phone rings. Thinking it is the kennel (dogs
have a problem!) I jump up. It's PEPCO saying we have power.
I call home and the answering machine comes on. All is well!

Go back to bed. We come home at 11 (complimentary breakfast
care of Marriott). Our next door neighbor meets us and says
the power just came back on about two minutes ago.

What gives? We walk in and the house is cool, my computer has
rebooted etc. I check my logs and it powered up at 4:02.
Evidently because Mayberry like MD is so old a community,
individual homes are connected to the transformer and system
in different ways. This explains why only half the homes in
our neighborhood lost power and evidently got it back at
vastly different times throughout the night.

We're grateful. If you live in or heard about the MD suburbs
of DC this past week, we had a severe storm Tuesday night.
Almost 10,000 people still do not have power. At this point,
it looks to be electric company incompetence. Yet, right now,
it's the holiday weekend, I'm cool and in my easy chair on the
computer. All is right with the world. ;-)

--
I hope we can all be good neighbors online!

Had two power outages this year, one was on the 4th of July when a storm
blew a tree branch onto wires and knocked them down. About 200 homes
were affected. That episode lasted
16 hours until power was back, next time
was the famous blackout of 2003 that
knocked power out for millions of people.

I was too cheap to go to a hotel either
time, I just sweated it out (literally) until
it was over.

In article , JSTONE9352
spoke thusly...
Had two power outages this year, one was on the 4th of July when a storm
blew a tree branch onto wires and knocked them down. About 200 homes
were affected. That episode lasted
16 hours until power was back, next time
was the famous blackout of 2003 that
knocked power out for millions of people.

I was too cheap to go to a hotel either
time, I just sweated it out (literally) until
it was over.

We have had two major ones this year but none during the heat. One
was a car slamming into the pole in front of my house at 1AM. Power
was out for about 8 hours or so. The other was a transformer three
houses up that got hit by a car at about 6PM. Power was out for about
14 hours that time. We stayed at home and roughed it both times. :-)

--
Stu Miller
Visit the Virtual Coin Museum:
http://www.thestujoecollection.com/museum.htm

In article , Joe Schell
spoke thusly...
In article ,
says...
We have had two major ones this year but none during the heat. One
was a car slamming into the pole in front of my house at 1AM. Power
was out for about 8 hours or so. The other was a transformer three
houses up that got hit by a car at about 6PM. Power was out for about
14 hours that time. We stayed at home and roughed it both times. :-)


Man, that's rough. We live out in the boonies and we lose power on a
regular basis during the winter. Now that I have a cell phone it's not so
bad, I just call the power company and wait. Back in the old days (last
millenium), I used to have to walk through the howling winter winds about
a quarter mile to the neoghbors to see if their phone worked. (We are at
the end of the line). I always had to keep an eye out for wolves ,

Now THAT is rough! All we have to worry about here is the occasional
groundhog, mole or possum. There used to be Saber-toothed tigers
roaming the area but there have been any reliable reports of them in
about 11,000 years. I think the possum killed them off.

To bring this back on topic, when the power goes off in the summer, it
gives me an exscuse to get out the metal detector.

Hmmmm, now there is an idea. I wonder if my wife would bite on
that... "Honey, we *have* to get a detector...what if the power goes
out?!?!!? If *we* have a detector, it would give *us* something to do
until it comes back on!" Gotta throw that *we* and *us* in there or
it will never fly.

--
Stu Miller
Visit the Virtual Coin Museum:
http://www.thestujoecollection.com/museum.htm

In article ,
says...
I was too cheap to go to a hotel either
time, I just sweated it out (literally) until
it was over.



Believe me, I am about the cheapest of the cheap. At the same
time, I can't see staying when the temp was 92 and climbing in
the house. We sit in direct sun for a good part of the day.
It might have dropped to mid 80s by 3 AM given the heat and
humidity in my area at the moment. Plus the young one has
three major tests tomorrow so in getting a room, we also got
him comfortable study space.

The real bottom line though is that my better half won't be
repeating how hot it is when a cool hotel is right down the
road! Truth be told though, I am also at an age where I
don't want to either. I'll stay from between 50 to 80.
Anything outside that, I want out too




--
I hope we can all be good neighbors online!