Where were you when the lights went out?

Oh, the excitement of being able to watch two football games on Sunday afternoon, back-to-back viewing of the two teams I support. What could be better? Well, for starters, having them both win! For another, having electricity at all times to allow the TV to air the game. Oh, is that asking too much? It seems it is!

I got home from lunch with Judy and Terri T. in time for the end of the second quarter, where the Jags were up 28-14. This cannot be, but it was true! No nap for me during halftime or third quarter as my eyes were glued to the set. The Jags did a very nice job of defeating the Buccaneers, a team which was less than challenging, according to Justin. But, for a short-sighted girl like me, it was fantastic! Backing up a little bit, when I got home, immediately I turned the TV to CBS to watch the game but it was not there…hmmmm…..where could it be? I found it on FOX instead, strangely enough. Okay, that’s fine.

Next it was time for the Packer game to begin, and instead of being shown on FOX, it was on CBS. The world really is upside down! I settled in to watch, and about 10 minutes in, got a phone call from Patti, my next door neighbor. She wanted to know if I had electricity in all my rooms, as it seemed she lost power in some of hers. That’s odd…She was going to call the others in her tower and I gave her my best wishes for solving the problem. About 5 minutes later, poof, mine was gone. Okay, now it really mattered to me!

Within seconds of this happening, my phone was going off, with Randy calling to see my electricity had gone off too. He wondered if there was a main circuit anywhere to check and I told him it was in Connie’s maintenance office. Hopefully someone had keys to get in there to check it but then he said, “I hear voices outside…” so he was going to check. I called JEA, after getting the number from Patti and went through the touchpad of commands in order to report an outage. It seemed to be aware of the problem, but I also pressed the ZERO to speak to a lady. She was very nice and told me 225 homes were affected by the outage, caused by a transformer fire (it was quite windy out there). While I talked with her, Randy came to the door to find out what I knew. She nicely told me it might be 6:00 pm before it’s fixed and I whimpered that the Packer game might be done by then. She apologized for the inconvenience and I asked her if I could go out there to cheer the workers on. I was told I could do whatever I wanted to do…

When I hung up with her, Randy asked, “Wanna go find a sports bar?” and I said, “YES!” He asked what I needed to do to be out the door and I said I’d put on shoes and grab my purse, as I was still in my church clothes. He told me to do that and he’d pull the car out of the garage. I dreaded having to do the steps, but I got ready like a fireman, and as I locked my door, Randy yelled over the railing not to be in rush, he’d been upstairs to lock up. As he got to the 4^th floor, we heard shouts from the neighbors that the power was back on, so he headed for the elevator and me back up the steps. Before he got in, he said, “Hey, if something happens, I’m in the elevator…” He told me he had his cell phone with him but there are also emergency buttons and a phone in there. No problem, he got back to his place to watch the Packers win, and I got back to my room to watch the same thing. We missed about 20 minutes of greatness but I will simply rejoice having the power back on, especially for my heater!