I know that I live in Florida, which is essentially one giant swamp. I accept that. I am even somewhat mentally prepared to live in Florida when the air conditioner breaks down for the second time this summer. I’ve got a plan, even. However, the plan has one teeny, tiny, minor little flaw. What happens when the power goes out? Like it did last night. All night.

Last night has to be one of the most uncomfortable nights I’ve spent in…well…probably my entire life. I remember a few similar nights a few years ago, after the hurricanes (Charley, Ivan, etc.) when we were without power for about a week, but that was in September. Last night? Last night was not a September night. In fact, we’ve been having near-record highs the past few weeks, I think, and I know it was hot as balls yesterday during the day. Fortunately, we have the enclosed garage room with its own a/c (a little wall unit) where I can live until the main a/c is fixed. We have an attic fan in the main house, so at nights and in the mornings when it’s cooler outside than in, I can get a breeze going and cool off a little. Plus, we’ve got ceiling fans in almost all of the rooms at this point, as well as a couple of portable ones that can be moved around as needed, so it isn’t completely unbearable. In fact, we had a storm move through last night that probably dropped the outside temperature by a good ten degrees in about a half hour. Unfortunately, that storm also knocked out the power.

There I was, moderately cozy in the garage room, playing a little WoW. It was about quarter to ten and I was thinking about heading to bed. I had just killed the last mob of the evening and was about to head home and sell the crap that I had harvested when *poof*. No more power. Lappy still ran just fine, but that’s because he has mighty battery power. The DSL was off, so poor Waradwen was abandoned in the middle of the Arathi Highlands. Fortunately everything around him was dead and should remain so until the server realized I had disconnected, so he probably wasn’t in too much danger, but still. Suboptimal.

I fumbled around the house for a while before I found a flashlight. I walked around the house and made sure that I turned off all of the fans that I knew were on (like the attic fan), then settled in to the garage room to wait out the power outage. It was still substantially cooler in there than in the rest of the house, and with the rain still beating down outside I couldn’t really open any doors or windows. I found my cellphone and called the GRU hotline to report that the power was out. The automated voice told me that they already knew about the outage and a “crew was going to be dispatched,” with an estimated repair time of 11:38. Sucked, but tolerable. I tried to sleep a little, but it was so stagnant that I couldn’t really drift off. Finally, about 11:15 I decided that I had had enough of waiting, so I called GRU again and got the same message. I was a little concerned that the message still said that the repair crew was “going to be” sent out, but the repair time was the same. I decided to jump in the shower and cool off until the power came back on, when I could go to sleep.

I discovered a great setting on our shower head where the water comes out in a really fine mist, which feels fantastic when it’s 90-ish degrees in the house. I even went so far as to fill up the tub with cool water and tried to fall asleep soaking in the tub, to no success. By the time I finally climbed out of my shower/bath it was 11:45 and there was no sign of the power coming back on. I called GRU again, to see if there was a new repair estimate and was pleased to hear a different message than the previous one. Now the automated voice reported that repairs were underway, but declined to provide a repair estimate. I was so tired at this point that I managed to finally fall asleep, expecting to wake up freezing cold because the power was on and the little wall a/c was set to max. Not so much.

I woke up for the last time at about 6:30 this morning and decided that I’d just get up, rather than toss and turn in the overheated garage room for another hour. I got dressed, fed the chickens (who seemed to have weathered the storm just fine), kissed the kitties (who are *loving* the heat in the house), and headed out. There were eight GRU trucks lining 12th road when I pulled out of my driveway. I don’t know what happened, but it was clearly a pretty serious problem that knocked out our power last night. I treated myself to breakfast out and a drive in to work rather than a bike ride, and have been checking to see if the power was on at the house by calling and waiting for the answering machine to pick up. It finally did, at about 9:45 this morning, so we were without power for approximately 12 hours.

As you can probably tell by this rambling narrative, I’m pretty exhausted. I’m going to work for a few more hours, then head home early and crash for a little while before I do some other stuff later tonight. Stay cool.