What a weekend ...

Man, last weekend was rough. Like many others, too many if you ask me, we lost power on Saturday evening and didn't get it back until Monday morning when PG&E temporarily fixed it. They permanently fixed it last night when we were again without power for another 4 hours. Now, of course, compared to some people in Almaden Valley, San Jose or some folks in St. Louis this is a short amount of time. But not when it is this hot and when you have small children. On Sunday afternoon, it was 97 degrees inside the house. We don't have A/C so we use regular fans in the evening to cool down our house and that generally is enough. However, when you lose power you can't even do that. And the weirdest part was that it was only one block of 23 houses in my neighborhood. As soon as you crossed a street, everyone had power. An old transfomer blew up. So what did we do? Well, friends of ours were kind enough to host Sonja and the boys for the day (Thanks Anke and John, and to your A/C unit). My friend and neighbor Brett across the street was (and still is) hosting our small freezer. And while Sonja and the boys were chilling, I tried to figure out how to cool the house somewhat so that we can at least spend the night. If it would not have been for our children, Sonja and I would have just pitched a tent and slept outside but our two boys need their sleep. So I bought a backup generator and another neighbor (Thanks Rich) helped me hook up the generator to the breaker panel so that we could use things in the house. We turned off everything but the fans and the fridge and that helped a lot. And I admit, at some point we turned on the dsl modem ... ;-)

Now all in all, it wasn't a major desaster but rather a big inconvenience. However, it felt great how our friends and neighbors helped and offered shelter, cold beverages and whatever else we could have needed. Thanks to everyone. If one of you ever needs a backup power generator in the future, just call me.