Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Electrifying Discovery

Today was another hot day, although not as hot as it was yesterday, thankfully. At work, my office is on the back side of the building so it's fairly comfortable without an air conditioner. But when I got home this afternoon, I was quite dismayed to discover that the electricity was off. This is not unusual, as it goes off several times a year...but it was stifling hot in the condo, and without electricity, there was no air conditioner or fan. There was no oven, stove, microwave, TV, radio, CD player, computer...just about everything I wanted to do required electricity...so, at 3:30 in the afternoon, I sat down in my recliner and took a nap! It was too hot to move, so a nap seemed like a good solution. When I woke an hour later, the electricity was still out, so I went out to my air air conditioned car and drove to an air conditioned store and wandered around for 30-45 minutes. By the time I got home again, the electricity was back on again...and I was back in business for the rest of the evening, a few dollars poorer because, you know, you can't wander through a store and not buy anything!!!

The experience, though, caused me to think about our dependence on electricity. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been so hot. It was light enough so that I could have done any number of things, except didn't want to move that much. Seems like there shouldn't be any one thing that could so handicap a person... I think I could be OK without if I was set up to live like that..but coming home with the expectation of preparing a meal in a cool house and doing some work on the computer while enjoying some music just didn't fit in with the plan for the afternoon!!!

Meanwhile, I'm remembering that a year ago, we were in Norway drinking in the beauty of the most continuously beautiful country I've ever been to. The top picture is of lupin alongside the road (and a lake) and the bottom picture is of poppies along a rock wall at the end of the Lysefjord.

3 comments:

Sunny said...

Beautiful pics. Yep, it is scary how dependent we are on energy. Seems to be no solution either. We can hardly all move to the country and have gas lanterns. Then it would just be crowded there and we'd need electricity again.

R. Aastrup said...

Hi there! Good to hear from you! I sent you an e-mail. Good luck finishing up your classes. You should write about your experience on your blog!!!

Patty said...

We are not very dependant on the utility companies. Have a wood stove to heat with and cook on, most nights we use kerosene lamps anyway. Don't have a clothes dryer or a dish washer, drink well water. Guess it wouldn't matter too much except for the COMPUTER !