The Canadian Chronicles 2014: I've Got the Power

Take this into consideration:  the last two weeks the hydro men have been replacing power poles around the south west part of the lake.  Only part of our lake has power and land line phone lines. The rest of the lake has literally been without phone access until this year when our brand spanking new cell tower with evil glowing red lights was erected.  Some think of it as a thing of beauty, like the Eiffel Tower.  It brings them 911 emergency contact at their fingertips and communique with the wired world.

I'm all for 911, but to be honest, this cell phone tower has been a curse, a $1300.00 curse to be exact. AT&T, for all of its fleecing, has been very nice to me.  My main problem is having 4 iphones and an iPad mini in international roaming territory.  Every time I call them, they are happy to talk to me, personable and chatty.  I think my gargantuan phone bill has afforded them comfortable chairs and a good working environment. Although the last woman customer service representative let me know that her nephew went into engineering and now was making 6 figures and it was good that my son was going into engineering, too.  After our 46 minutes chat, I thought maybe we should have coffee?  I mean, we are friends now, right?

It's also been a curse to have too much contact with the real world.  When you have to live in the middle of nowhere, you can't run out and pick up some celery seeds for your recipe.  You also can't avoid the bills and the school emails and the spam that is floating around in the ether.

Night skies will never be the same around here.  You can avoid the glowing red lights of the tower and the lightning mimicking flash of the landing strip strobe if you look only directly up the lake. This is the most light pollution has ever effected or annoyed me.

Back to our hydro men, yes, not being sexist.  I don't seem to find any hydro woman milling about out there.  Each day, for two weeks, our power is out 9-12 noon.  Then it is on from 12:00-12:30 (maybe the guys are out to lunch during that time?) and then it is turned back on at 2:00 for the rest of the day.

This calls for some pre planning if you want to do laundry or any other sort of electrical housework. It makes you charge every battery operated device to its fullest before the power magically disappears.  Also, you tend to get down to the coffee maker and make sure that you are caffeinated before you lose the window.