Yesterday afternoon, we had a quick thunderstorm blow through our area. It was definitely in the weather forecast, but the timing and severity kept changing. I’m not a huge fan of driving in bad storms, especially storms that make the roads slick with fallen leaves. But I’ve been trying to get to Target for almost a week now — it was pretty much go to Target now or start using computer paper in the bathroom. So I headed to Target after work and the sun was shining!
Now Target can always be a black hole sucking me in for hours at a time, but within 20 minutes of shopping, the sky turned black, the winds picked up and it started pouring. Where did this storm even come from?? By the time I paid for my purchases and headed to my car, the wind had calmed down and it was only drizzling, thank goodness. I made it home in one piece.
But I can’t say that about one of the trees in our neighborhood!
There was a police officer next door to our house with his lights flashing when I turned onto our street. At first I thought he was at our neighbor’s house, until I noticed the huge tree branch sitting in the street across from our driveway. I couldn’t get a good photo of it because it was so dark (at 6:45 p.m.!!!), but believe me, it was a good sized tree branch. And the branch was leaning on the power lines. My husband and I were able to pull into our driveway, the police officer was sitting at the other end of our street blocking folks from entering from that direction. And we still had electricity!
The electric company arrived around 10 p.m. (the police officer had been sitting at the end of our street for that long!), and they quickly turned off the power to our street so they could cut down the hanging tree branch. It was so cool to watch the electric company use a chain saw to cut the damaged tree down from a bucket truck in the dark!
The power came back on (yippee!) and we went to bed. It wasn’t until this morning that we realized that we didn’t have any cable, phone or internet service. Now for two people stuck inside working from home, you kind of need internet service to be productive. My husband called Verizon from his cell phone and waited on hold for over two hours!
In the meantime, we were entertained by this:
Look at this tree!
After waiting on hold for over 2 hours, Verizon told my husband that they could send someone out on Friday at 2 p.m. to look at the problem. He obviously wasn’t too happy. And it’s not like we are having problems with service in our actual house, there’s an actual fallen cable out on the street! (Again, too dark for good photos!)
So today I worked from home with no internet access. I created a hot spot with my company-issued cell phone and plugged it into my desk top computer so I could dial in remotely and access both my e-mails and my files. It was my husband’s suggestion and honestly, something that I would have never thought of doing. Good job, husband!
And please don’t judge me, but I am using that same hot spot tonight to write this blog post. My husband went to Home Depot earlier to purchase an HD antenna, so at least we can turn on the TV this evening. (I thought his head was going to start spinning around this afternoon because he couldn’t watch TV!) I’m really missing my internet radio. And now I am wondering how I’m going to do my morning workout tomorrow…
Hopefully Verizon will be here in the afternoon to fix the problem. It’s kind of crazy that losing access to internet and cable can just throw you into a complete tailspin. But maybe that’s just how this year is going. We see you, 2020, we are waving that white flag, we are calling uncle. Now bring back the damn internet!
Notes from a Self Quarantine 