Feb 27 2010
Short
Yesterday, I woke up to a dark, stormy day.
As I watched the trees toss their heads through the skylight in my bedroom, I thought, “It’s just a matter of time until the power goes out.” I heard trees falling and things being blown over as I worked, but the power stayed on. I also heard a truck going down the driveway.
Peeking out the window, I saw the Amerigas truck driving slowly down the rutted dirt road. It stopped at Mark’s, where Luna announced his presence (“Hello, this is Luna, your doorman!”). He was afraid to get out of the cab, so I got an umbrella and ran down there in the pouring rain, shooing Luna away. I had to tell him about ten times that Luna wouldn’t bite him before he believed me. She’s all bark and no bite. I asked him to fill up my tank, throwing caution to the winds with the insouciance of a girl who had finally paid off her most recent $400 propane bill. I was down to about 20% and that’s as low as the gas limbo is supposed to go.
Feeling smug, I went inside to do the dishes. The water wouldn’t heat up, meaning the flash heater was out. I called Mark, and he came over to have a look. It was worse than I thought, though, because he had to take the bottom of the housing off to see what was going on in there. Apparently the wind and rain had both blown out and soaked the pilot light, so it took awhile to persuade it to work. This is why having your flash heater outside is a less than stellar idea.
While he was working outside, I went back to work inside. For about five minutes. Until the power went out.
I looked out at the clearing skies and wondered what was up with that, since the storm appeared to have blown over. Rob came by to get the generator going so I could continue my degenerate lifestyle, and he said there were other, bigger outages, so PG&E may have shut ours off temporarily to fix the others. It wasn’t out long, and all was back to what passes for normal by the time I went to bed.