Electricity?

Last night, our electricity did something really weird.

At about 3:30am, I woke up, just out of the blue wide awake. Something was wrong. Then I realized that the AC was off, and the fan wasn’t running either. (Yes, we are spoiled rotten.) I noticed that our neighbors still had electricity by the lights coming in the window. The first thought that went through my mind then was, this is just like The Bourne Identity! Someone’s gonna hit our house! So I sat up in bed and tried to process what might be wrong. Power outages aren’t terribly common, but they happen. Then I saw the light on a power strip under the night stand. That’s when I started getting really confused. We had no fan or AC, but we still had power in the outlets?

Now, I wasn’t really terrified, or even scared that someone was out there to try and kill us. But the thought had run through my brain. I got up, left my flashlight in the nightstand and went out into the rest of the house, to find our emergency light on. I went to the front room to check out the breaker box. By feel I found that everything was up, which is on. Then came the even more confusing part. I switched off one of the breaker, and our outside lights came on! I even heard our AC beep on. Well that’s weird. I fiddled with the breakers a few more times to figure it out. All I managed to do was wake up Zoe and Joy with the AC beeping on and off about six times in a row.

After some more head scratching, Joy asked me if I really wanted to try and figure this out at 4am. I saw the wisdom in that and returned to bed. I still locked the bedroom door though.

In the morning, our power was still weird, and I was starting to think I might spend the day waiting for the electric company to come to our house. Before I tried anything desperate though, I went out to the meter on the side of the house to check it. It was still on. So I switched it off and on again. Doing so accomplished three things. First, a gecko ran for his life from under the meter cover. Second, the meter had a nice little buzzing sound, flash of electrical light, and all the power started working again. And third, I reconfirmed the long known solution to all problems electrical; turn it off and turn it back on again.

The end.