On Saturday, we lost power at our house. After about 3 minutes, the power came back
on, then dimmed way down (to about 30%) and stayed that way. It was enough
juice to have dimmed light bulbs, but not enough to power our TV or DVD player. We
had lots of candles and decided to have a picnic. I went to Vons deli and got some
fried chicken and potato salad. Walking to Vons, I noticed that our side of the street
was dark, but the opposite side was not. The street lights on Linden were out, but
the Vons sign (and the interior) were lit up. Inside Vons, the registers were working,
but the freezers were not running.

This freaked me out, so I unplugged all of our electronic equipment. I didn’t want
anything being fried when the power came back on.

Toby called the power company and although the recorded message said to use the new
automated system, it never gave instructions on how to get to the new automated system.
So Toby waited on hold for about 15 minutes before giving up. What is the point of
having a phone number to call when there is an outage if it is extremely inconvenient
to use? I know that we probably won’t bother to call again.

About 4 am, the power came back for good, and we all lived happily ever after.