No doubt you have heard that when something bad happens to you, get ready; your problems are about to triple.
Such was the case during this recent bout of Arctic weather that caught all us southerners unaware. Actually, the weather folks had been telling us to get ready for one of the coldest blasts in recent times but I’m not sure we were prepared for temperatures dropping suddenly into single digits accompanied by strong icy north winds.
At our house, we took the precautions we had been told to do, things like wrapping pipes, putting those Styrofoam do-hickeys on outside faucets, letting water drip in the sinks and such.
We were settling down to a long winter’s hanging with it when just before dark on Thursday, the day the blast hit, our house went dark. I mean, totally dark. Our power was out. Calling Entergy to report the outage, we sat, we waited, it was getting colder as each minute passed. Finally 4 ½ hours later, we found out the problem; the high winds had knocked down a power pole just down the road. They fixed it and bingo – the lights and blessed heat came on.
Everything was okay then, right? We assumed it was but during the night, we were having to add more cover because even though the heating unit was running, we determined that the air it was producing was akin to the temperature of the wind howling outside. In short, our heating unit was on the fritz.
It was not until the following afternoon as we huddled for warmth and even drove to town in a warm car and got a bite to eat that we were able to get a technician from one of the three companies we called to come out, locate and fix the problem. The power surge when we lost power had knocked out the breaker to our heating unit. It was fixed and we watched with sighs of relief as the temperature in the house was starting to climb.
Finally, we were back in business and would be able to ride out the Arctic blast. We thought we were until I hit the start button on my computer to get back to work and nothing happened; it was deader’n a doornail.
Calling my computer guru in Bossier City, Rex Moncrief, he determined that the problem was in the monitor; it was as dark and lifeless. I had my radio program to put together for Tuesday afternoon’s broadcast and there was no computer to create the program. I reverted to what I formerly did when I began as a writer half a century ago. I wrote it all out in long-hand,
read it to my phone and emailed it to the station.
That was one deadline I met but I was faced with another critical one; I had to come up with my weekly column for the newspapers for which I write, columns that I email after putting them together. With email not available, I was stuck until Tuesday morning when shops were back in business after the holidays. Locating a monitor at Office Depot, I brought it home,
unpacked it and called my buddy Rex to help me get it installed. What you are reading now is my first effort on my restored computer. If it’s a little scatter brained, you’ll hopefully understand.
That makes three problems in a row that we faced and eventually conquered and I pray to the Good Lord that things will be on the up and up now. Let’s just hope when everything thaws when the freeze lets up that there won’t be water spraying everywhere. The plumbers are busy enough without me adding to their workload.
