Musings on my neverending quest for sugar

East Coast memories, alive and well

Too much excitement yesterday. It all started as a relatively typical working afternoon setting up the dbio lab, when all of a sudden the lights flickered out. A moment later the exit signs and half of the ceiling lights turned on, while the fume hoods and high-tech fridge started screaming bloody murder for lack of main power. I looked over to the incubator - no sound. Uh oh. My unborn baby quails!

I ran upstairs immediately to seek advice. Dr. Cheney told me to keep the door closed for the moment, while Dr. Fowler said it was probably best to switch it to standby power, especially when the temperature dropped 10 degrees. Unfortunately, none of the teaching labs had any standby power outlets! So, as soon as the temperature dropped to 90 (which only took half an hour) I rushed over to Home Depot with a mission - to acquire an 100-ft extension cord. Soon there was an orange cord in the biology building snaking out of one lab, across the hall, and into another.

The reason for the outage was "a manhole cover blew up." (Or, something like that.) Apparently it damaged some switches and/or fuses directly servicing the biology building. Te entire campus was out for a few moments, but the biology building was the only one I know of that was out that entire afternoon.

Why not the English building, for gosh sakes! They can read by candlelight! Can't do diddly squat in a bio building with no power!

That afternoon, while setting up the rest of the lab in half-light, I commented to Dr. Cheney about my younger days in NJ, muddling around in total darkness looking for flashlights and candles during late-night blackouts. Coincidentally, that's what happened to us later on.

Administration sent us an email about an impending 3-hour blackout (for repairing cables) about half an hour before it actually happened. I read that email about 2 minutes before the computer, lights, fridge, and fan fizzled. Someone across the dorm yelled in anguish. He was probably writing a paper. I sat in complete darkness for a few seconds before I realized that the hall lights were still on, probably running on generator power. At least we had something...

Soon we were greeted with thunder and lightning and rain (v. East Coast, I must say) and yet another momentary blackout. By this time I had had enough and figured I might as well go to sleep.

It occurred to me that getting an umbrella would be a good idear...

posted by sugarfiend @ 12:28 PM