We Passed! (So What?)

It was a great thing, first thing in the morning, to sit in line for three and a half hours waiting for gas. Intrepid daughter and her teddy bear came with me, and weathered the situation with the other hundreds of motorists who shared our predicament. Forty-dollar cash limit was reduced to twenty by the time we hit the front, but I persuaded the guy to go twenty-five and pretty much filled the Prius. Good to have a Prius this week.

Our town has its own electric company, and the mayor's office told me they were turning us back on at 10 AM yesterday. The woman told me it was on us to get things in order, and if we didn't, our house could catch fire or explode. I told her that was insane. If there are a thousand people in our town, at least ten of them are crazy, and when their houses blew up, ours would too. She was not fazed. Power was going on at 10 AM, and that was it.

My neighbor had a genius electrician who changed all his circuit breakers, but he was too busy to help us. My friend, a retired electrician, came out on the condition that I drive him, and told us we would have to change not only the breakers, but also the box, and that we would have to pull the meter to do this. He didn't feel like doing the job, but would do it anyway if we couldn't find anyone else. Fortunately, we did, and he also pulled the meter outside and cleaned it or something. It was pretty hard to buy the box and breakers, and it cost me some gas (and ultimately three and a half hours this AM). There were no breakers or boxes anywhere in my town, but I went to a Home Depot farther from the flood and they had several.

After waiting for gas this AM, we went to our home and found a green sticker on it. Apparently the mayor's office had thought about those houses blowing up, and sent inspectors. The only thing they looked at was the meters, and on my block, my house was one of only four that passed. However, we will not have electricity until every other house on the block passes too. I need not have rushed. After a flood like this, I seriously doubt everyone on my block is in a position to have an electrician come out, and those licensed in my town are very, very busy.

So we're fortunate to be at sister-in-law's house, a few miles north, where we're welcome and there is, thankfully, enough space for us. But I hate, hate being shut out of my home.

And I know very well there are people worse off than we are. I don't care what people say about Christie, Cuomo and Bloomberg. They are a bunch of self-serving thugs, and the good things they do are largely for the sake of publicity (witness blowhard Christie trying to look statesmanlike with the President, whom he's publicly trashed on very recent occasions).

I don't know about you, but I feel like we're living in a third-world country.