For once, we received advance notice of an approximately six-hour power outage in our area, starting Thursday around noon. This is a planned outage by our utility provider, Duke Energy. While they didn’t give a reason, I surmise it has something to do with connecting a recently-built solar-battery plant to our electrical grid.
Six hours isn’t trivial in terms of impact on households. Those who don’t have generators will have to go to the supermarket and buy ice (if not ice chests) to keep their frozen items from spoiling. While we — who belatedly installed a whole-house generator six months after Helene blew through in 2024 — will, after a momentary bump, noisily ride it out.
I keep saying to myself that we should have installed a generator years ago, being that we would lose power several times a year, for an hour or two, sometimes five or six, you could never predict. And this was with underground utilities in our neighborhood.
I would like to blame the black bears in the area for chewing on our power lines, but they prefer lower-voltage targets, like birdhouses. The bears knocked over and tore apart our first bluebird house back in May and decided to destroy the other one last week. So much for bluebirds.
Bears don’t give advance notice, they just show up, do whatever they want and then leave. At least Duke Energy gave advance notice, this time.
Today’s observation/comment is how repugnant I find the current masculine “fierce look.” Specifically the look captured below, courtesy of New York Times, of our Warrior Secretary Pete Hegseth. (Never mind the vague look of his wack spouse.)
Donny as he sees himself
Trump’s sycophants know how to kowtow and they do their best to imitate the master. They are the playground weaklings. He is the playground-bully-weakling.
Someone should remind Taco Donny: Scowls don’t kill.*
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* That’s where $1.5 trillion defense budgets come in handy.