Thursday, February 5, 2009

*brrrrr*

This morning at 3:10, I heard my tv make a pop. It’s a pretty old television (it’s had parts replaced and been fixed!), so when I heard the pop, I knew what happened. It had died. Well, I thought that was the problem. I got out of bed, turned on my floor lamp & tried to turn the tv back on. Then I noticed that my space heater and fan were not on…

I sat back in the bed and the lights started flickering. Thinking quickly, I was able to light a candle. But the power didn’t go out. All of a sudden everything in the house went berserk. All of the lights dimmed to practically nothing, anything that was on turned off and I could hear a strange beeping.

I walked out of my bedroom and went downstairs towards the beeping. It was the stove. I decided I should go ahead and tell my parents about this. I walked in their room and told them I think we have a problem. Something is up with the electricity. Before turning on the lights, my mom said “Yeah, it’s called a brownout. It’s similar to a blackout, but your power stays on, just at a low voltage.” I told her that I thought the house was getting cold.

Apparently, during said “Brownout” the only thing that continues to work are lights. Furnace and everything else was off. Mom told me to get into her bed because it was still warm from her electric blanket. She went to watch the temperature in the house, which had already dropped almost 10 degrees.

I heard her yell upstairs to T to tell him to come down and get the kerosene heaters to warm the kitchen room up. I hear her say “We don’t have power… sort of” and T responds “Um, yeah we do!” I busted out laughing. I’m sure that he thought she had gone nuts.

I go back upstairs and try not to freeze. My alarm went off at 6:15 but I couldn’t get out of bed until 7 because it was so cold. Apparently between my snooze at 6:45 and my alarm at 7, our power shut off for good. After I rolled out of bed and dressed my candle light, I looked at our clock/thermometer. It was -9.3 outside and less than 50 degrees in the house.

After calling our electric company, they explained that 48,000 of the 150,000 homes didn’t have power. I’ve heard that some parts of Kentucky won’t get power back until mid month because of the ice/snow storms this week and last. Luckily, my sister's house has a working fireplace (the 4 in our house are closed) and we have the kerosene heaters. My parents have already brought my 96 year old grandfather over; he lives on the farm as well and has no electricity.

I hope the electricity is on by the time I get home from work because I want to watch the Grey's Anatomy/Private Practice thing. This is going to be a lovely (and very, very cold) day. I hope everyone else stays warm!!

<3,
IDK, a freezing Rose?

4 comments:

Kim said...

Are there hotels, with electricity, near by?

Andhari said...

id usually be pretty pissed too when the power is off, its usually happening on the summer where I live :)

Rose and Jill said...

Most of the hotels around here are booked because of last weeks weather. There are people who I work with who have actually had to move their families out of state! Thankfully we have the fireplaces and kerosene heaters and I'll be able to go shower at my brother's house.

LWLH said...

No really, Florida is obviously nothing compared to there, but our temps have dipped too.

 
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