![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
What a day...
Thursday was "fun".
Started out with a trip to a local nursery to pick out stuff for garden plots (the organization that owns the building was fronting some money for the plants even for our individual plots)
I got a couple of flowering plants:
Lavandula Thumbelina Leigh
Lavender 'Provence'
I like the scent of lavender and they'll go ok in the gaps around where some of the stuff I have to leave in "my" bed .
I got several sorts of tomato (and a large *strong* tomato cage, after seeing the way the wimpy ones they had last year collapsed).
Sugar Lump
Roma
Purple Calabash
I also have seeds I saved from the weird heirloom tomatoes they had last year.
I got six broccoli starts, as well as some spinach and snap peas. And an eggplant.
Then there are the seeds. Carrots, radishes, cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, and zucchini.
Besides "my" plot (a slightly raised bed), there's also a "hill" that has a large section nobody has gardened yet (because of rocks). I'll be trying to get a section of it into use.
I'll be posting some "before" pics soon. Couldn't do any weeding or other prep work because of all the rain.
Then last night a bit before 11, the power went. A call to the power company line (thank god for the glow-in-the dark fridge magnet they sent out ages ago) got that they knew about the outage.
Fortunately, I have flashlights and a *big* electric lantern, so Fay and I settled down to read books. I also used the "emergency" radio so we could listen to music (it's the only thing I have that uses C cells, and I have a *lot* of them thanks to a friend unloading her excess on me)
I do seem to have once again managed to not have the monitor on the UPS, so I had to shut down the computers blind. They seem to have come thru ok.
After an hour or so the power company had updated the info (apparently 20 minutes after my first call) and had that the outage was due to an unidentified problem at a substation and they expected power to be back by 3:30 am.
At some later point (I didn't check the time) there were gunshots outside. At least six, rapid fire. I called 911. And a while later we had six or seven police cars out there.
I went down so they could ask me questions if they needed to (with the power off, the doorbell wouldn't work. Besides, I was curious. I propped the door open because with the power off the electric door locks will let you out, but not back in.
Eventually got talked to and went back in. Called the power company again. The outage had been caused by "animal interference with a substation" (the local news is going to say something about it, but hasn't gotten there yet). And the power restoration had been moved back to 8:30 am.
That was very much not good because without power, I can't use my CPAP. I finally gave up and and went to bed and tried to read some more. Gave that up and was really uncomfortable because I didn't have the CPAP.
Finally, at 7:30. the power came back on. I made sure the computers were ok, and so on. And got a call from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mistresscayenne. I'd asked her about getting a lift to Powell's (by way of my storage) because I have a big load of books to go there, and since a lot are hardbacks, if I went by bus, there's a good chance it'd cost me more than I'd get.
I had to tell her that I was half dead and could we reschedule.
ETA: Seems it was a racoon that crawled into a substation...
Started out with a trip to a local nursery to pick out stuff for garden plots (the organization that owns the building was fronting some money for the plants even for our individual plots)
I got a couple of flowering plants:
Lavandula Thumbelina Leigh
Lavender 'Provence'
I like the scent of lavender and they'll go ok in the gaps around where some of the stuff I have to leave in "my" bed .
I got several sorts of tomato (and a large *strong* tomato cage, after seeing the way the wimpy ones they had last year collapsed).
Sugar Lump
Roma
Purple Calabash
I also have seeds I saved from the weird heirloom tomatoes they had last year.
I got six broccoli starts, as well as some spinach and snap peas. And an eggplant.
Then there are the seeds. Carrots, radishes, cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, and zucchini.
Besides "my" plot (a slightly raised bed), there's also a "hill" that has a large section nobody has gardened yet (because of rocks). I'll be trying to get a section of it into use.
I'll be posting some "before" pics soon. Couldn't do any weeding or other prep work because of all the rain.
Then last night a bit before 11, the power went. A call to the power company line (thank god for the glow-in-the dark fridge magnet they sent out ages ago) got that they knew about the outage.
Fortunately, I have flashlights and a *big* electric lantern, so Fay and I settled down to read books. I also used the "emergency" radio so we could listen to music (it's the only thing I have that uses C cells, and I have a *lot* of them thanks to a friend unloading her excess on me)
I do seem to have once again managed to not have the monitor on the UPS, so I had to shut down the computers blind. They seem to have come thru ok.
After an hour or so the power company had updated the info (apparently 20 minutes after my first call) and had that the outage was due to an unidentified problem at a substation and they expected power to be back by 3:30 am.
At some later point (I didn't check the time) there were gunshots outside. At least six, rapid fire. I called 911. And a while later we had six or seven police cars out there.
I went down so they could ask me questions if they needed to (with the power off, the doorbell wouldn't work. Besides, I was curious. I propped the door open because with the power off the electric door locks will let you out, but not back in.
Eventually got talked to and went back in. Called the power company again. The outage had been caused by "animal interference with a substation" (the local news is going to say something about it, but hasn't gotten there yet). And the power restoration had been moved back to 8:30 am.
That was very much not good because without power, I can't use my CPAP. I finally gave up and and went to bed and tried to read some more. Gave that up and was really uncomfortable because I didn't have the CPAP.
Finally, at 7:30. the power came back on. I made sure the computers were ok, and so on. And got a call from
mistresscayenne. I'd asked her about getting a lift to Powell's (by way of my storage) because I have a big load of books to go there, and since a lot are hardbacks, if I went by bus, there's a good chance it'd cost me more than I'd get.I had to tell her that I was half dead and could we reschedule.
ETA: Seems it was a racoon that crawled into a substation...
no subject
Hmm... there should be a way for CPAP users to get a night's sleep outside of Briggs & Straton...
no subject
Alas, those portable power thingies that can let you start a car with a dead battery, and run 12 volt gizmos don't have enough power as far as I can tell or I'd have bought one years back.
I want 3 days (in case of bad winter outages), plus a safety factor. Call it 12 hours a day. for a total of 36 hours.
The CPAP is about 20 watts. So that's 720 watt-hours. At 12 V, that's 60 amp-hrs. Alas, I think the portable power units are only 20 or so.