The Rush of Power

This is post DC.

(Again with the Latin?)

Okay, the big six-oh-oh. And thanks for reading.

(And aren't we here to talk about AC?)

Ah, yes. Speaking of power, I now have some!

Well, sort of.

There's a temporary alligator-clipped-in thing -- in principle, I could be stealing electricity right now. But I figured gazing admiringly at a work light for a few minutes was enough for the first day.

After an endless winter, I finally got the electricians over this morning, and it didn't look good. Lots of hints of rain, forecast for thunderstorms coming, not to mention plummeting temperatures, and snow expected tonight and tomorrow. (Next time I hear "Lake Effect," someone's going down). Two of the crew left right away to get materials. The other two got done what they could, then we sat around for more than an hour, then the sitters got a call to meet the material boys for lunch.

After lunch, it was raining fairly steadily, and I figured they'd fart around for a few minutes and call it a day. They started unloading materials, rolling like Whiffle balls through molasses, looking at the sky, saying comforting things like "Doesn't look good … this rain sucks … I have a bad cramp in my leg …"

But suddenly, the rain stopped, the sun came out, and work started getting accomplished. They installed a new riser cable -- the line that comes down from under the eaves along the corner of the house to the meters, installed a new meter box, and connected the riser to that. Below, that's Carmen up on the ladder making the initial attachment, to the right of the old riser cable, and Mike holding the ladder and wondering how much longer I was going to be shooting pix before offering to hold the ladder so he could go get his gloves. Next picture is Carmen, pulling the riser cable through the top of the meter box. Click the pics for bigger versions.

Inside, Steve and Mike installed two new circuit breaker panels, after the tall man on the job (me) put in the key four nails that no one else could reach -- had to put up a sheet of plywood to mount the breaker panels. Carmen drilled a hole through the house, fed cables from the meter box outside into the basement, and Steve hooked them into the breaker panels. Les sank a grounding rod and connected one ground wire to that. Tomorrow morning, Les and Steve come back to run a ground wire to the water pipe in the basement. ("Double-grounding," they tried to explain to me, but if I can't hit it with a hammer, I'm lost.)

Next step is to get the city inspector over to approve the work. When (if, he said superstitiously) the inspector signs off, he then faxes notice of said approval over to RG&E, and then they come out, install new meters, and connect from the pole to the top of the new riser cable. And then I start getting two new electric bills!

So here's what the outside of the house looks like at the end of the day:

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In other good karma news, my next door neighbor back at the current domicile stopped me when I got home after the big wire thing to ask if it had been me who had shoveled their driveway last snowstorm. (It had been.) She asked why, and I said that I could tell that they were away for the weekend, and I was already in that mode, and I figured I'd clean off their driveway and back porch before things melted and refroze.

So I got a batch of "the world's best chocolate chip cookies" coming my way.

It's all good.