The Power

We'd known about an impending interruption to our electricity supply for at least a month. In our building complex, we have annual maintenance in the electrical vault. First, the city engineers came to the public street vault to turn off everything to our buildings. They did that before 9:10 am. Then, our contractor was able to begin the required maintenance in our condo power supply room. Eight hours were set aside to complete all tasks, but everything is generally up in running in half of that window.

   

So, this morning, Jay and I drove uptown to waste some time in the mall and at London Drugs. We also went to the specialty whole foods store. The weather was decidedly not as pleasant as yesterday. Consequently, we noticed that the rain and wind will soon strip the local deciduous trees of their leaves, and therefore any autumn colours as well.

We returned early and were about to use a Subway coupon to buy a foot-long down on Columbia Street, when the electricity returned at about 12:45.  The New West Hydro guys had come back and got the power flowing.  How nice to have lights and heat.  Oh and we also welcomed the wifi because that means TV, radio, and telephone connections.

Being without electricity seems weird.  Because we live in downtown New Westminster, hydroelectric power lines from northern BC dams head directly into our central location.  I can remember losing our power in an unscheduled outage only one time in all the years we've lived here.