Work was interesting this afternoon. Our entire building was without electricity for nearly two hours!
I was able to undock my laptop and continue working on a few things, but I had no Internet access, no email, and, after 50 minutes, no telephone.
The MonkeyGirl was kind enough to look online and see if this was the case anywhere but at our office. (Thanks to texting via cell phone. But my battery was low, too. D*mn! I’d meant to plug that in this morning.) Nope. Just us and maybe another adjacent building or two.
Right after I came to that conclusion, the building’s announcement system came on to tell us that it was a power company issue and they were working to correct it. No other explanation. No idea when to expect service to be restored. Perfect!
I’m among the lucky who have windows so I could stay in my office, though with our gray skies, there wasn’t even much natural light. There are emergency fluorescents in the middle of each floor, so those on the inside wall – without windows – at least had somewhere lit to congregate.
I also had one of those little squeeze lights handy so that you could get in and out of the restroom without killing yourself. (No lights at all in there!) I purposely stuck it in the back of my desk drawer after the last power outage. It got some use today.
When we were about 10-15 minutes from being sent home for the day, the power came back on. About 10 minutes after that, the phones came back up. But, we were unable to use our computer network for the rest of the day. No email. No Internet. No file access.
This was still the case when I left for the day. Fun times. At least I wasn’t on deadline for anything, but I do have things that need to get done just the same. Oh well.
To borrow Scarlett’s line, “Tomorrow is another day.”
5 comments:
I have some of those emergency power lights, the kind that sit in an electrical outlet charging and then go on automatically when the power fails, in various places in the house, in the bathrooms, the upstairs central hallway and downstairs in the living room/dining room.
I don't know why they don't have those in restrooms in office buildings.
We had something similar happen here, only it was during the Florida summer. I thought I was going to die of heat exhaustion.
It cracks me up to no end that you have everything you could ever need in an emergency. It must be your inner girl scout. LOL
I hope your internet is back up today!
That's how we discovered that emergency lights are needed in the restrooms! It must be something about where our building is located because we have been hit with numerous power & water outages. Port-a-pottys in the parking lot is not an attractive look
I carry a little maglight around in my pocketbook. Along with my Swiss Army knife. Desert island, I'm prepared :-)
Karen Anne -- That's a great idea. I need to mention that to our office manager!
Victoria -- Oh, I hardly have everything. I just live life under that "stupid once" rule. :-)
MM -- I think it must be. Supposedly, a cable of some kind got cut and we were among 16 buildings to lose power. I was reading a story from back in June though that had big buildings all around ours (including the stadium) losing power on consecutive days due to some kind of switch issues.
Karen Anne -- TOO funny! You know, I have a cheap version of a MagLite that someone gave me that I USED to carry 'til the batteries wore out when I used it during an outage at home. Thanks for the reminder!
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