Month: November 2008

Thanks to a neighbor’s shorted-out circuit box, we were without power for a couple hours. Apparently the box shorted out and filled the house with smoke. And while I thought it was just a power outage, I looked in my backyard to see firefighters shining flash lights at the transformer box on the power poles that run through our backyard where they explained the situation. Apparently the transformer box tripped because of the problem in the neighbors power box, and it killed the power to the four homes connected to that transformer. Or something. It’s all voodoo magic to me.

It happened right at bedtime for the kids, and while my eight-year-old didn’t care, my five-year-old flipped out a bit, so we had to have several candles in her room (as she’s used to having a nightlight plus a little noisemaker).

Nothing like a little Scrabble by candlelight to kill the time.

Anyway, they had to get somebody to climb up the pole, so while Pacific Power actually showed up within about 20 minutes of the outage, nobody got up on the pole until about 30 minutes ago. They had to completely disconnect the neighbor’s house from the grid until the electrical equipment in the house was fixed as it was going to keep killing things. Needless to say, it appears they’ve moved out for the evening until things get fixed. And I get to go reset all the clocks in the house.

When Thanksgiving rolls around, I don’t like to be one of those people that is shopping the day or two before to get last-minute items. I like to get stuff planned a bit more in advance for our gatherings so we don’t have to try to find that last tub of Cool Whip along with the rest of the population of Bend.

But there is one thing we forget nearly every year — Tostitos. Every year we make a seven-layer dip, and every year we get all the ingredients for the dip, and every year we forget to get something to actually dip into said dip. I’ve made many day-of trips to the store to get those stupid chips, and while this year I managed to remember it the day before (just got back from the store), I’m still not happy about it. I’m posting this note here so that hopefully I’ll remember next year, and that all of you will politely remind to not forget the chips for the dip.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

(And no, I will not be at any of the Black Friday sales. Nothing’s worth dealing with that madness. If I can’t get it online, I’m not getting it.)