Cold snap
We just got started on our first cold snap here in the District. “Cold Snap” in Virginia generally means temperatures in the teens and twenties with high wind, although when I was in Blacksburg we once had a week with wind chills around -30F. *That* was serious cold, and I learned never to walk a mile in such weather in just jeans and thermal underwear.
Anyway, it’s a little cold snap. And of course everyone cranks their heaters on, and then there’s all the other electric devices — computers, Christmas trees, cell phones charging, iPods charging, and innumerable digital whores being mugged in the “streets of San Andreas”:http://www.gta-sanandreas.com/.
Around about ten, the Elf and I notice the lights dimming, brightening. Dimming, brightening. Flickering. We go to sleep, because we are old. (Old: no longer in our twenties.)
About eleven, there’s a loud bang. Lights go off and then come back on. Our previously-off bedroom light, which is on the voice equivalent of the “clapper,” goes through its startup routine — lights on! lights dim! lights dimmer! lights off! — which manages to wake me up completely.
Ten minutes later there’s another loud bang and the whole block falls dark.
No snow, no rain, no wind. Just some cold, and who knows how many thousands of people are without power?
It’s at times like these I think to myself, you know, maybe nuclear power _is_ the way of the future. Just as long as they “put the reactor in Fairfax”:http://www.thudfactor.com/textpattern/index.php?id=550.