Last night, when I got home from working at the theater and running a couple errands, I planned to hang out online a bit and get some reading done. I walked up the driveway to the side door, mentally cursing the guys for not leaving the light on for me. I got in the door, flipped on the light switches, and realized I was probably the first one home, because the house was dark. Then I realized the living room lamp had not come on. I flipped the switch a couple of times, and nothing happened. I thought someone must have turned it off at the lamp rather than at the switch. I looked outside, and the porch light, which I had just switched on, was not on. It slowly dawned on me that the clock on the DVD player was not on either.

I made my way up to my room and turned on my computer, to give me some light (ah sweet laptop battery!) and called Keegan to see if I could sleep at his house, since I didn't know if I'd have an alarm clock in the morning and it was way hot in my room, when Dau knocked on my door asking if I knew what was up with the power. Apparently our neighbors were out of power earlier in the day, so we thought maybe we had some residual effects from whatever had caused that. I went out to my car (which still has not been unloaded from camping last weekend) and rummaged in a basket and found my battery lantern, and ran into Troll in the driveway. I told him we had no power, and he said he knew, and held up a package of tea lights. So once we all got upstairs and settled in with candles and stuff, I called PG&E from my cell, since my home phone is cordless and runs off the power, of which we had none.

Turns out when Mer moved out, she ended the power service in her name, and Dau was supposed to call and get it switched into his name. Apparently he never did that. Apparently we've gotten two bills with no name on them, and a letter stating they were leaving our power on as a courtesy, and could we please call and start a new account for our property. We've paid the bills, so it's not like we owed them $500 we were not paying and they shut us off for that reason. The person I talked to said that we had a balance and that needed to be paid "by the person of record" and once that was done we could go to the local branch office and make arrangements for our power to be turned back on, and that it takes 2 business days. The conversation that ensued went like this"

me: so it'll take 2 days to get our power back?
PG&E: 2 business days, yes.
me: but tomorrow is Friday
PG&E: Yes, so you're probably looking at Monday for a restoral, but when you go in you can ask if there are any Saturday appointments available
me: so you're telling me I'm looking at two days with no power, and possibly an entire weekend?
PG&E: possibly yes. There is a balance owed on this account, it's small, just the balance of the current bill, but that needs to be paid before service can be restored.
me: how much is that?
PG&E: Unfortunately I can't tell you that because you are not the person of record.
me: but the person of record doesn't live here anymore!
PG&E: I understand that, but I still can't tell you. This is the problem we sometimes run into with roommate situations.

At this point, I start crying, and ask, bottom line, what is the fastest way to get this done. She says there is no way to get a same day appointment, so if I went into the branch office this morning, the very soonest appointment I could get was on Saturday. I think the tears got some pity, because she told me there was a 24-hour check-by-phone line, and if I could get my hands on our account number, and the amount due, I could call, pay the bill, call PG&E back with the receipt, and since it was still Thursday, she could try to get me an appointment for Friday.

I went out and started screaming through the bathroom door to Dau, who was taking a shower, that I needed the most recent bill. Got that, called the number, got it paid. Started to call PG&E back, and my cell started beeping low battery. So I went out to my car, started the car, then plugged my phone into my car charger. Thankfully it held out for the call, and I got an appointment for today, so there should be lights and telephones and internet when I get home tonight. If there is not, let me just say that unhappy things will be happening to Dau.

Once I got back into my room, I called Keegan and said I was going to stay at home, but could he please call me in the morning to wake me up, forgetting that my cell battery was very near dead. I set up a bunch of candles on my bedside table, and read for a while, and fell asleep in my book, waking a little while later with all the candles still burning. It was about then- 1 AM- that I realized my cell would not make it to morning the way it was beeping at me, and so I found my travel alarm clock, and set it for morning. Thankfully it went off and woke me up, and thankfully our water heater is gas so we had hot water this morning.

When I got to work we had to deal with some crap, and the day was shaping up to be completely sucktastic, but it seems to have settled down.

Sorry, hun, that really sucks. I had a horrible time with a sub-letter once and she nearly ruined our credit.

But she did leave us a big gunny-sack of rice, so we called it even. (sarcasm)

OMG that sucks. But you handled that really well. Love being a girl. Tears are great at getting what you want. :)

Oh no you poor thing. I have lived a week wihtout lights and I feel your pitty. It's horrible, and I hate it. Bless you for being so good with them and for them gettign to you so quick (hopefully).