“Now, if we only had a superhero who could stand here and turn the generator real fast, then we wouldn’t need to burn so much fuel”

Sorry for the downtime. We apologize to those who visit the assorted slithytoves sites, as well as to those for whom we host. We lost electricity in the big storm on Wednesday night, and were out for two days. Hottest two days of the summer so far, naturally. Turns out, in an emergency I’m stupid like those people who wouldn’t leave New Orleans without their pets last summer. Plenty of people offered us beds, but those people did not extend their offers to my animals, so we sweated through it. Sergei panted every second of Thursday that he was not in the basement (and he won’t go to the basement without an ivory lettered invite and in company of me or my husband, because he’s persona non-grata near the kitty food and the kitty litter boxes and we’ve yelled at him enough about it that he stays away). I did ok on Thursday, but by Friday I was having all those typical too much heat symptoms : light-headedness, nausea, incoherent thoughts, etc. I didn’t pass out, though, which if you have known me long enough you know is a major victory. Sophia got cool at camp and Kurt went off to work to get online and breathe the ac. Perhaps I need a real job.

They’re saying it will be Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday, before they get power back to everyone. We were fortunate to have been without for just two days. We’ve tried to curtail our power use to help AmerenUE, because they say more load on the system makes it harder to bring people back online. So, I didn’t turn my computer on over the weekend though we had power by Saturday. We haven’t turned the ac on yet, though this afternoon may force my hand on that score. Today I am doing laundry, too. I can’t put it off much longer, unless we want to be naked.

There was a live downed power line in the middle of our street for two days, as well, and it kept sizzling back into a smoky orange fire every time it rained. The fire department kept coming out to stare at it, waiting to see if it caught something on fire that they could put out. Apparently, they’re not allowed to do anything about electrical lines down. Your house catches fire from it, they’ll tend to that, but live wire lying in the road? Not their problem. That high level hum, punctuated by periodic sizzling arcs, and the very particular burning smell of wires permeated the street. The neighbors kept warning people it was live, and people kept acting like we were yanking their chain. Surely not, they argued. No, really. Can’t you hear it? Can’t you smell it? It’s live alright.

No one came to see about it until an AmerenUE employee noticed it. Apparently there’s a law that power company employees cannot leave the site of a live downed power line until a crew shows up. Said crew got here a lot faster when it was keeping one of their employees from doing his job elsewhere. That seems like a good law, to me. Chalk another line on the “reasons I’m not libertarian” column.

I may have mentioned that this is a baseball town. On Wednesday, the night of the storm, the Cardinals were playing in Busch stadium. After the storm blew through, damaging the press box and injuring around 30 people, there were still thirty thousand people in the field waiting for the game to resume. And it did, after about two hours. Half a million people may be in darkness, but a baseball fan doesn’t leave the game. Cardinals won, by the way.

Wednesday’s storm news from the Post-Dispatch, for the curious :

• Few untouched by rampage
• Power Update : 320,000 still without electricity
• Power outages could last five days

Plus a current tally of who still lacks power, by zip code. It’s a lot of people and businesses. Some of those folks are under a boil water alert, further complicating their living arrangements.

I am behind on everything, so be patient with me if you are expecting something from me.

This is my prayer : may there be no further casualties from the lack of power, and may people be ushered back onto the grid quickly.

P.S. My house is partially visible in the Webster-Kirkwood Times this week! You can also see the city chopping down my tree. So sad. Still, except for losing the tree, don’t count me in the set of people unhappy with street improvements. They’ve promised me a curb and a parking lane and a wider than normal, bike-friendly road. Not to mention taking the bend out of the street. If they’ll plant another tree in my front yard, as the end of the article implies, I’m pretty happy.