Workus Interuptus + Entry Interuptus

[susandennis]

I had a nice long entry nearly finished when it got ated as my brother used to say.

Sherry went down and got the scoop.  The juice outage was caused by the Starbucks construction across the street.  At 3 p.m. Scott, the building manager, told her 2 to 10 hours and they would turn off all electricity before they brought back anyway.  I'm pretty sure I typed in that entry that I made sure all my computer stuff was saved.  Except that entry.  Doh.

It's 4:52.  I'm on the terrace because inside is too hot - no moving air at all.  Thank goodness for this little Lifebook and it's really long battery life!

The terrace cleaning project got interrupted because I need the elevator.  But, I did make great progress.  Once I get the Goodwill crap in the car, the trash in the dumpsters and a couple of things in downstairs storage, I'll have organized shelves that I can actually find shit on.

A couple of weeks ago I needed an ethernet cable and couldn't find one anywhere.  Finally I robbed the DSL modem.  Today I found 5. 

I will also have some empty shelves which will be quite fun. 

I also found two battery operated TV's.  I guess I'll fire one up and watch the news. 

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Ok, I ran out of stuff to do so I decided to do more on the terrace and now it's really really good.  The cart is full of Goodwill items. I'm three elevator rides away from done and wow.  I'm very pleased with myself. 

Still on the terrace.  Just below, on the street the power crew is standing around waiting.  The good news is that they are standing and waiting and not resting on the curb cause it's going to be a really long wait.  BUT, a woman from the fifth floor is down there grilling the power guys. She was talking to them way too long for the answer to be '5 more minutes and you'll be fixed'. Oh well. 

Could be way worse in a bunch of ways.  The TV reception out here on the terrace over the air is remarkably good.  Sadly, there does not seem to be any wifi anywhere out here.  Oh well.

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Ok, 6:15...  I wandered down the hall and found the first violinist (Seattle Symphony) and his wife leaving.  They were tired of no electricity.  They don't have a flashlight.  I have several so I told them they could have one if they would go ask the power guys down on the street 'how much longer'. The guy's not my favorite person anyway and he's moved on down a notch now.  He did go down and talked to them and then called up 'they don't know' and then he left.  Guess we should be glad he's not an investigative reporter. 

This is getting old.

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Finally about 7 p.m. I remembered I could dial up.  Except... I have no dial up numbers.  I remember seeing them on the Qwest.Net we site but not writing them down.   On a whim, I looked at the network connections on this Lifebook and, sure enough, there's a number so I plug the phone in and hit go...  been a long time since I've heard modem music.  Then it fills in some username and password and I have no clue what it was but it worked and I was in!!  At least I could verify there were no work issues.

But, I only had three hours on this machine so I was hesitant to get frisky.  Finally about the time it started getting seriously dark inside, there was a pop that scared Betty back under the bed and Lo and Behold there was light!!!

Whew... stuff started coming back.  8 p.m.  Computers back.   The work one decided that it was February 2005 which fucked up Exchange but once I figured out what that was, I was able to send the email I wrote at 3:30. 

Now I need to go reset clocks and pop down to Sherry and Lee's and make sure their stuff came back on ok and the cats aren't freaked.   (Sherry and Lee left for the weekend before we went totally dark,)

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If this had been last week, I would have slit my wrists.  Turns out no one at work even knew I was gone.  And there was nowhere I had to be or stuff I had to do.  It could have been so much more inconvenient.

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I did yell down to the power guys when the lights came back,  "Hey guys!  Thank you!!"  and i got a very hearty "You're welcome!" Nice.