Power Out AGAIN

For the second time in two weeks, we lost power. It’s the third time in a year and the incidents always last about the same amount of time - which makes me wonder if there is a consistent problem with a particular circuit or zone. When we moved to northern Virginia from Capitol Hill over two years ago the first thing I asked when we were looking for our new condo was if the power ever went out. The answer was there was a generator back up. What they didn’t say was that the generator only works for the building and not for the specific units. So the hallways, etc are covered, but the inside of a unit remains out of luck. So I go to the dominion energy app and fill in the information. The status is supposed to be updated every fifteen minutes, but it never is. So the outage lasted from 4-8:30 PM. Luckily we had gotten sandwiches at the grocery store yesterday and had that for dinner. Thank goodness we didn’t put the oven on to cook a casserole. In the end it wasn’t a big deal but more of an inconvenience. I recharged my phone using my power back up, but also know we can get in the car if we need to. So we watched live tv on my phone for a bit, played video games on my iPad, and sat outside for a while - listening to the loud generator in the building next door that had lights on. At least the entire evening wasn’t ruined. There are storms expected over the next few days again and we won’t be surprised if it happens again. I just need to make sure our equipment is charged and try not to get annoyed. Once it becomes a habit you begin to know what to do, but it’s just happening too often. 

No Power - Thank Goodness We Weren’t in the Elevator

We just got back home from picking up groceries at Harris Teeter. That meant an elevator ride from the parking space to our condo. Just as we settled down, everything went quiet - eerily quiet. The usual humming and noises and sounds stopped, the Wi-Fi quit, and the peep hole view looking in to the hallway was dark. The emergency light in our den was on, so I knew it was not just our condo. The office building across the street was dark. So I searched the internet for power outages and it was noted in our area. I checked dominion energy and logged in our problem and it indicated there was an outage that would be addressed between 5-10 PM. The next door digest app was full of neighbors saying they were experiencing the same thing. Verizon sent an email and text that service was disrupted. The condo building sent a text that the power was out widespread in our area. My question was - why didn’t the building generator kick in? That was one of my first questions before we bought a condo here. When we lived on Capitol Hill probably one of the few perks was underground electric. We probably had 3-4 instances of power outages over 13 years, and those were due to human error. So I got my spare phone charging battery out and zapped my phone to full charge, thinking we may need our personal hotspot later in the evening. The power was restored about 2-3 hours later, just in time to prepare dinner. We still don’t know what happened nor did we get an explanation about the generator - yet. It just makes us realize how dependent we are on electricity and how utterly helpless one feels when it’s gone. Thank goodness we weren’t in the elevator.