A little lightning....

So we haven't posted in ages....

Pathetic - especially since blogging is practically the only way to let people know what's going on here. Hmmm...I have an excuse but it is just that. An excuse; two actually.

No power.
No internet.

**Internet: The internet problem was due to lightning striking the tower. They came and fixed it a couple of days ago so we're back up and running. **

Power: The power issue has been an ongoing thing. Actually it's fairly regular to have no power some days. There doesn't really seem to be any rhyme or reason; just no power.

Our case has been a bit extreme though...as we found out a couple of weeks ago. We started to have way more blinking on and off of the power. For example, my fridge is running and I flip on a light - WHOOSH - there goes the power. Hmmm....turn off light...power comes back on for a bit. However, in any given moment it could disappear for a while. As in some times it just wouldn't come back on when I turned the lights off again.

Drat...prairie days again.

Then Alan discovered that by jiggling (yes, I just said jiggling) a few wires he could make the power come back on. THIS is not necessarily a good sign. Alan dropped by the landlord's to mention this little glitch and they said they'd get right on it, because one of them is an Electrician. GREAT! Oh wait, he's out of town for a week. Okie dokie...we sort of managed by jiggling away to pass the week without losing food in our fridge and getting semi-hot showers.

Last weekend they got back into town to work on it. Of course as they are 'setting up shop' the rainstorms begin again. Oh well...they took off the outside meter and low and behold the entire system was black and burned up. This is what we expected due to the large amounts of smoke that would roil out every time we had a large energy load in the house. (like taking a shower for example)

I'm happy to report that the power seems to be up and running at more power than we thought possible. I can actually run the fridge and the washing machine at the same time. I can even run the dryer now!!! (220 was just a bit out of reach before...) I can get a shower with a bit more than a drizzle of water and it's warm enough to actually be a bit hot! The water is on for now so I've been doing lots of laundry and lots of cleaning. Amazing.

So - as you can see - life is never dull here.

What am I thankful for today???? You guessed it - power.

Faith