Yesterday some guys came with a couple of tons of equipment and trucks
and the like, planted a giant generator the size of our garage, and cut
off the power in the entire block. After about an hour and a half power
came back on, thanks to that terribly noisy generator right in front of
our house, across the street. The power company had issued a warning
that the power was going to be cut for half an hour.
Great ! We shut
all windows, let down the shutters, closed all curtains, and still we
could hear the roar of the generator throughout the house. Needless to
say sleeping was just great. Ugh.
For today they had announced a
power cutoff from 10 to 12 and 15 till 16. Since we have a webdesign
company, that could be a bit of a problem, but hey, there always is
stuff to be done without internet, and the laptops could take over for 2
hours. At 9.25 power went down. Hmmm. Half an hour early, so no coffee
made yet, and Bart hadn’t transferred the data he was working on to his
laptop. Great. At 12 I went outside and asked a guy how much longer it
was going to take. “Oh, at least another couple of hours”. WTF ? I found
my camping stove and heated Wolf’s veggies, so at least he could have a
decent meal. We had bread. By that time both graphic designers had
already left the house and sought other workplaces, since power was
really needed. For us there wasn’t much to do: Bart slept a little, I
embroidered. No PC, no cooking, no telephone, no babyphone, no lights to
go to the bathroom, no Olympics on telly, no hot water. We couldn’t
even do the chores, like washing up, ironing, mowing the lawn…
Finally
the power came back on at 15.45 ! Bart is filing a complaint and asking
for a compensation for lost work hours. If he had known beforehand,
they would have moved for the day. Hmmm. Grrr.