Life as a hermit

Amish goat herder

Today marks the first day in eight were I once again have power at my place. For the past week + one, I have been living the life of a merry hermit ... an Amish goat-herd, high atop the hills and dales of the Valley called Aro ... rising before sunrise in my dark, cold hovel, to scurry off to my goat-herding duties (where a hot shower, lights, coffee and other like-minded goat-herds amass on a daily basis).

My duties done for the day, I would shuffle home on the peasant-wagon, in the dark once again (shorter winter days here), to feed the eager cats Dex & Squeak, and then resign myself to crawling under the covers ... awaiting delivery of a hot pizza, and then to sleep (perchance to dream, of modern 1st-world contrivances like electricity, once again) ... usually by about 7 pm. 

Yes, I was living a sleep/wake schedule not unlike the early farmers of yore – awake before dawn to scuttle to work, then skulking home to immediately go to sleep when it got dark. 

This, needless to say, was absolutlely NO fun. I have a shit-load of fun tech-toys, all reliant on a regular diet of electrical energy, that I could not use. 

I have, in my dim and distant past, willingly gone camping many times. Getting back to nature, off the grid, and roughing it IS fun – when you CHOOSE to do it. 

Enforced existence as a pitiful creature, in a post-apocalyptic setting, however ... not a popular thing in this household. The votes are in: 3/3 life forms here at Casa Del Stevil say: THIS SUCKED.

Oh, the storm ... 

There was this massive honkin' storm, see ... coincidentally, eight (or is it nine now?) days ago. It slammed into Wellington and beat the holy be-jaysus out of the place, snuffing out power for 100,000+ homes. It lasted a good two days, with the combined fun of torrential rain and howling gale-force winds. Then it tailed off a bit. Then it actually got sunny and calm again about three days after it started. 

For most of the first day of seige, I was OK ... I, along with all the houses along this street that is effectively almost the top of Aro Valley, were still electric'd up. (Something I'd noticed in 2+ years of living here – never had a power failure!)

I did however notice an odd popping sound coming from somewhere outside, during the brunt of the seige – like nothing I'd really ever heard before, except maybe in sci-fi movies ... then at one point, I happened to be looking outside at the mayhem, and I saw what was causing the zany-sounding pops.

The main power line from the pole on the street, leading into my house, was sparking. A LOT. Right at the connection point where cable meets pole. It was JUST like a sci-fi film now ... only I didn't think this sort of crazy, wild, dramatic sparking actually happened in real life. When seeing this effect in a movie, I thought the FX guys were taking dramatic license, and were adding the wild visuals and sounds to help the thick and clueless in the movie theater to understand: "HEY! Pay attention now ... BIG NASTY STORM a-brewing!"

Indeed. I thought that electricity either worked, or stopped working. I assumed it was mostly invisible, unless of course I was in fact being attacked by aliens, or a Terminator was about to materialise from the future to look for Sarah Conner.

So – long story slightly shorter – a couple of calls to the city electric people got me somewhere on the list with the 100,000 other people who'd lost their power. Then I noticed a funny thing ... my neighbours still had THEIR power. Lucky me, I was the anomaly on the street. (Moreso than usual ...)

Next came seven or so days of a true French farce; I made a 2nd call to the Electric Weasels (shifty city workers, not electrified mutant marmots – who from now on will be known collectively in this Blog as "EWs"), this time playing the "gimp card", telling them that being a double-amputee fumbling around in the cold darkness was no fun. This garnered a promise of immediate service (this was Wednesday – the storm was the previous Friday). So I waited ... and waited ... and no one showed up. Nor did my phone ring to say: "The repair EW can't make it".  

Whilst at my goat-herd stand the next day, I got a call from one of the EWs saying he was inspecting the pole (dirty bastard) and would let the actual worker-bee EWs know what was up. It struck me as odd that they'd send a point-man out to determine these things ... why would I call up to say I had no power, for fun, when in fact I did? Well, that was his mission, I thought. OK then. Good gig there, Chester.

Go now, point-man of the EW crew, and get the guys with the actual tools and ladders and shit. And hook me back up.

However, this was not to be. Returning home from the goat gig, once again, to no power, I was dismayed. Further dismay-ment ensued, when I noted there was no card in the mailbox, nor a phone call to say why I was still a cave-dwelling sub-human CHUD of a creature, of increasingly miserable attitude. (I did manage to fill an hour or so of being awake, upon returning home, by burning down the battery of my iPhone, reading things and posting the odd email/FacePlant thing ... )

By now my downstairs neighbours were also on the case (Steffi and Chris). We share this house; I have the upper floor suite. Steffi decided to stir up as much angsty trouble as she could, calling the EWs to berate and badger them. This resulted in nothing but snooty behaviour from the EWs.

Next, we both got our landlord Dean involved. He was told (by the EWs) that after the :30-second inspection by the first roving EW: the issue was NOT with the city power pole, but rather, the house's connecting gizmos. 

Which of course was a lie. A really BIG lie. Told by a big fat liar. (His pants were likely on fire). I feel confident in saying this, because I had sat and watched the Tesla-like mental sparking at the power pole the night of the storm. Ergo, the EW who showed up to "inspect" things clearly never hoisted his lazy carcass up the mizzenmast that is the power pole in question. Nay, me buckos and hearties ... the scurvy landlubber sat like a bilge rat in his truck, apparently deciding that dangling over the edge of the Aro Aerie cliffside here was likely too much like actual work.

Here's the legendary Tesla in his lab, casually reading,

while all hell is breaking loose electricity-wise

over his head. This was me, the night of the storm.

A dizzying series of calls then ensued, in a circular fashion – between me, Dean the landlord, Steffi the neighbour, and the EWs. It was finally determined that Dean had to front up with the cash for the repairs himself. Which he did, as expediently as possible ... and on Saturday afternoon (yesterday), the combined efforts of Dean and two private sparkies-for-hire got us sorted. 

And there was much rejoicing. 

Advice

Prior to all this meteorological mayhem ... I'd been meaning to write a quick quip about advice. Specifically, the wondrously absurd scenario that a couple of my pals regularly subject me to: they individually send me a panicked email or text/IM, asking for my advice about something. 

Whereupon, of course, I give it – IF I either KNOW from experience what I'm talking about, or, because I read some information about it recently. Either way, what I tell them is true, and not a trick, ruse, or cheeky bit of wild imagination at play. (And if I don't know anything about said question, I deploy my ninja-like skills on Google and unearth plausible solutions).

And almost every time, these two chuckleheads will either claim that my information is an outright, bald-face lie/can't possibly be true, or, they'll teeter off on the wings of some other cockamamie idea that has no basis in sanity or reality.

It is however fun to mock them later on, when their clearly crazy idea turns to custard.

I need to get SOMETHING out of all this circular insanity. If I can't get a "Hey thanks for your advice, that worked great!", I can laugh at their monumental failure. Heh.

Gifts from the cats

One of the lovely epilogues from a week of living in the dark due to this storm and weasels not doing their jobs ... the cats were looking out for me. I guess they reckoned I shouldn't be eating pizzas exclusively through the mayhem, and they (unbeknownst to me, in the dark) had brought in, and left for me in a darkened corner of the living room, one large and eviscerated rat, and two birds. I found these once the lights came back on. Thanks, kitties.

A shiny moment in the farce

Hell Pizza is one of the pizza places I favour here. This past week, their management discovered, via one of their drivers, that I was labouring under the yolk of no power here. I got a call from the promotions guy the next day, who proceeded to bestow on me several fantastic Hellish-themed things, not the least of which was a mitt-full of Hell Dollars – $100 worth to be precise! On top of that, he gave me a really nice 'hoodie (festooned with Hell logos, making me look like a bad-ass biker or 'skater wanna-be), a hat, a frisbee, and some cookies. And a nifty Hell bag containing it all.

Thanks Hell! At least someone was on the ball during all this.

Oh yeah, that photo at the very top

Regular readers will note there's now a photo of me up at the top there now. I'm holding a camera, my nice Nikon DSLR – as photography is one of the other two things I enjoy dabbling in (the three things not involving wild, alcohol-fuelled behaviour being: writing, designing stuff graphically, and photography).

Inspiration seized me to make one of my own, after I helped my mate Don Redmond by designing a photo/logo for his new Blog, Brew-Ha-Ha. Check him out here. It's a hilarious and highly relevant view of beer (because beer is, of course, highly relevant). 

Right. Time to make more coffee and have some fresh home-made bread. Hooray for electricity, and all the wondrous toys I have that run off the magical juice.

Atrociously, astoundingly, yours in absurdity;