Electricity

Electrician: Please leave a message after the beep.

Me: Um hi. I hate to bother you. I know it's a holiday weekend, and you probably aren't even there. Maybe you remember me from when you were here three years ago and I had all that strangeness with the attic fan? Well, now another weird thing has happened. I was preheating the oven to make some cookies, and I could see that the oven was ON, because the light was on, sort of - actually it was pretty faint - but it just wasn't getting HOT. I was afraid I was going to need a whole new oven. But then in desperation I thought I'd use the toaster oven - and that didn't work either. And that's when I noticed that the display on the microwave was off. So at first I thought it must be a breaker, so I switched them all, but nothing worked. Then I realized that the outlet that the computer was plugged into wasn't working; in fact I remembered that there had been some strange flickering going on at one point, but I didn't think anything of it. And the light in the bathroom doesn't work either. I really could just live with all this til next week, but I just discovered that the refrigerator seems to be involved .... So, anyway, if you get this.....

Daughter: Mom, you need to FOCUS. Did you call Public Service?

Me: Well, no. I think they mainly fix things that are related to outdoor wires and things. This seems like more of an INSIDE thing. It's just one or two circuits I think. I keep thinking maybe there's some kind of MASTER circuit breaker that maybe I don't know about...

Daughter: Well, it's called Public Service Gas and ELECTRIC. That says to me that if some part of your electricity doesn't work, they would be the ones to call...

Me: Well, maybe....

Daughter: I'm calling them. Now, what will we do about the freezer? Do you have things you need to bring over here?

Me: Well, so far everything is OK. They always say you can wait several DAYS when there is a power outage, as long as you don't open the door. Everything in there seems fine for now....

NOT MUCH LATER:

Me: Guess what! There's a guy here from public service. He said he could tell from the outside that half the house was out. At first he thought he could just do something where the wires connect to the pole, but then he said it was in the MIDDLE somewhere, and he had to take down that whole huge group of wires that goes from the pole to the house. I never heard of anything like this - losing PART of your electricity. I thought you either had electricity or you didn't. But he asked if I had had any big trees down lately. He said it could be from that time the lightning hit the big oak on the other side and the wires weren't all properly fixed. He said it will all be fixed in twenty minutes! Hooray!

Daughter: I hope I am going to get some CREDIT for this.