Power Outage, Long Walk, Electronic Medical Records, and UPS

          Well, so much for being away from home during the scheduled blackout. On Thursday, the  electric company was in our neighborhood to upgrade their facilities so there was an 8 ½ hour window from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. when the power was supposed to be off. On the same day I was supposed to be attending an electronic medical records class at work from 8 a.m. till 4:30 p.m. So that should taken care of  the problem, right? You know, the problem of having nothing to do for 8 or so hours. Did I mention that I was also expecting a delivery from UPS that same day? Of course I would have missed that if I was at the EMR class and UPS would have had to redeliver the next day. Not a problem because I could have waited another day for this computer I’m writing on. More on that some other time.

          The previous day, I received a call from my supervisor telling me that the EMR class was cancelled because ironically, the electronic program crashed. That spared me from having to wake up at 5 a.m. so I could workout before leaving for work. I try not to get out of bed before 7 o’clock on my days off. So now I had to readjust my schedule to try to fill the time while without electricity and while waiting for UPS to arrive. I started walking on my treadmill until the power went out, which took me halfway to my goal time, then continued walking outdoors around the block (so I don’t miss UPS) until I finished 2 ½ hours. Incidentally while circling the block I encountered a barking dog inside the fence of one of the houses. The first time, he was barking ferociously at me. The second time, by the time I passed him, he stopped barking. On my third go-around, the dog just boringly laid on the ground not even acknowledging my presence. That made me chuckle.
The power outage started about 10 o’clock and when I got home from my walk at about 12, still no electricity. That meant no TV, no internet, not even good old radio. Oh my! I would actually have to read something on paper if I can find a book or magazine. I considered digging up a book I haven’t read since the early 80’s : Dr. George Sheehan’s “Running and Being”, because one of my Facebook friends quoted him the previous day. Well, it didn’t have to come to that because at 2 p.m. the power went back on. I did have to rediscover my oven to cook my lunch though (baked tilapia) and the stove to heat water for coffee. I even heated precooked rice in the oven by sticking the metal container inside while the fish was cooking. That made me realize how much we have taken something like electricity for granted because it’s usually there on demand. I even had to hurry and take a quick shower before all the hot water from the heater ran out. Thankfully, even though the power was out for 4 hours, I only had to endure 2 hours of it.
After the power came back on, the rest of the day was spent watching videos and waiting for UPS to deliver. The package didn’t arrive until about 6 p.m. Rereading Dr. George Sheehan will have to come another day.

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