April Showers Bring No Power

I wasn’t sure what I was going to talk about today. I wanted to present something amusing to counteract the tariff announcement which should be happening any moment now. Fortunately, Lord Cthulhu provides.

I was on my second snooze when I was jolted awake because my CPAP had cut off. Then I heard the clicking noise the sleep number bed makes when it loses power. It had been storming all morning and The Mrs came in to announce what I was slowly figuring out — our power had gone out.

My first thought was “I can’t believe we made it all the way through the winter without having to use the generator.” Probably cursed myself with that one. After waiting around a bit to see if it would magically fix itself, I grumbled about a bit, then finally got dressed and headed out to my car. Our cell reception can be spotty at the best of times, so I drove out to a local gas station where I knew I could use the car’s wifi to connect to the DTE app. I had been able to report the outage, but not get any information beyond that. Once I was connected, I learned that the power was due to be back on by 3:30 today.

X-finity texted me to let me know that I might be experiencing connectivity problems, due to the storm, but that they would be working on restoring service. Great, thanks for that.

Having experience with DTE, I knew that this meant the power would be back on anytime between that moment and late April, so I headed home and went through the process of setting up the gennie. I flicked over the breaker in the house, put on a rain slicker, and headed outside. I filled the generator about 3/4 of the way with gas, hoping that the power restoration prognostication wouldn’t be too far off. Then I struggled with the cable, which is always the most difficult part. There is a specific way it has to be positioned in order to connect and it always takes me forever to get it set up right. I switched the switches, flipped the doodads, pushed the start button…

The generator struggled a bit, tried to start, and didn’t. It tried a few more times, then a couple of lights came on and it turned itself off. I checked the flow switch which is the other thing that always screws me up. I tried it in both positions, no joy.

There was a brief text exchange with The Mrs (who was at work by this time). I told her I was going to give it a few minutes and then try again.

Back inside where it wasn’t pissing down rain, I turned on an electric lantern, found the instruction manual, then when back into the dark bedroom to find my reading glasses. I checked the start up procedure and it seemed like I had done everything correctly. I had taken a picture of the lights that came on and a quick comparison indicated that either there was something clogging the air filter or the CO2 sensor was faulty.

Back out into the rain. I pulled the air filter which did have some leaf dust in it. I cleaned all of that off, set everything back to rights, and started the initialization process again. It chugged a few times and viola! Success! The generator was happily chugging away, ready to provide power.

At which point my phone chimed.

It was X-finity again. They were texting to let me know that service should be up and running and to let them know if I was still experiencing any problems.

I started to chuckle.

I unhooked the cable from the generator to the house, flipped the breaker back to city power, and all of the lights came on.

After fumbling about for about 90 minutes and feeling pretty damn butch for having gotten everything working, there was no need for the generator after all.

I started laughing and eventually had to sit down because I was getting light-headed.

It’s now four hours later and everything is still working fine <furiously knocks wood>. I haven’t reset the clocks yet, because that seems like begging for trouble. I’m still riding high from the manly fix-it crap I did.

Listening To: “Daddy Cop” by Zander Hawley. We’ve been watching The Rookie since it first started airing and thoroughly enjoy the mix of police procedural and comedy. The show gets special kudos for not just presenting a “blue is good, criminals are bad” but also delving into the issues surrounding modern policing including profiling, systemic racism, balancing work and family, and others.

Anyway, the return of Hawley’s character was pretty damn funny. Even funnier than the first return.

Currently Reading: How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix. I started reading this when it first came out, but had to stop because we were in the process of selling our place in Ferndale and moving to New House™. Our realtor saw the book on the table and thought it was hilarious. I decided it was time to finish it and was able to fall immediately back into the narrative.

Plus, my copy is autographed, because I’m cool like that.

Current Obsession: My recent choice for background noise has been collections of the best scenes from Supernatural. I didn’t watch the last few seasons, so some of the clips lack context for me, but I may set about rectifying that.

We are in the formatting stage of our next release, and it is an amazing collection of short stories by Donna J.W. Munro. Look for Dark Workings of Wild Women soon!

There are also a number of other exciting titles in the pipeline. Looks like we may be adding another set of portable shelves to our traveling display before the year is out.

I recently discussed the issue of purchasing books and the TBR pile and such. Well this week something weird happened. 2nd & Charles, a bookstore chain which I have never visited, had a sale over the weekend. They were having a penny a page sale. You could purchase up to five books for this incredible price. A little online research revealed that there are two locations that are, if not nearby, at least within a reasonable driving distance.

Side note: Remember, “reasonable driving distance” has a different meaning here in the mid-west. Your milage may vary. Literally.

We this would seem like the perfect opportunity to check the store(s) out. It was happening on a Saturday and The Mrs would be gone all day. Not that I am implying that this would allow me to sneak my purchases into the house without her knowledge or anything. The day came and…

…I stayed home.

There was a book sale and I didn’t go.

Now keep in mind I did purchase a number of books while we were on vacation AND I had attended a large used book sale the week before AND I have been trying to catch up on titles that I already have…

Yeah, I know. It’s weird. I think I might be sick.

Brain scans have been scheduled.