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No longer on the river and, again, an empty nester. Back to living on Fleming Island and making some more friends!

Sunday, March 24, 2013

By the light of day

Thankfully the rain has taken a break at this moment because my building is now without power yet again. There is daylight! When I called in to JEA to report the outage, the recording told me I was the only one. Now that scared me! Why just me? My payment has been taken care of and it is not very likely only MY unit would shut down. 

From the kitchen I heard shoes outside my door and there was Herve, my neighbor, on his way up the steps to the 5th floor. When I announced my power being out, he said yes, everyone’s was out. I told him what the recording told me, but he assured me everyone was out in our area. I could hear the elevator ‘alarm’ beeping downstairs which did show me all were included in this outage. Herve said he heard the transformer blow somewhere further south on the property which is somewhat a big deal, as we remember from last summer’s lengthy outage from our transformer.
               
This computer had the battery disconnected to extend its life so I managed to plug it in and make use of it. I will leave it on after the power comes back to charge it up to full. Right now I am on 1/3 strength so won’t be able to write too long here. At the same time, I am charging my cell phone using the battery from my computer (thank you, Justin!). Once this battery goes, I am sitting in quiet---not a good look for me! Guess I could wind up my music boxes for sound. OR, I can go down to the car to charge the little laptop and my phone, and listen to the radio at the same time. A trip down and then back up the stairs…hmmm….come on, JEA!

Back again---electricity restored after two and a half hours. I now have all my devices plugged in to charge up. I should always remember to keep their battries filled for just such experiences. The recorded voice from the electric company informed me a branch or vine took down the line. That is much better than a transformer being out, by about 9 1/2 hours, based on last year's outage of 12 hours!!!