The joys of country living.

Haven’t been able to check my email or do any blogging for the past 47 hours thanks to a windstorm that blew through our neck of the woods on Thursday afternoon. It played hell with more than a couple of trees and knocked out power to some 20,000 DTE customers. DTE originally expected to have everyone back up within 12 hours and then, as time passed, they kept extending it. I ended up not going into work yesterday because the lack of power meant I couldn’t take a shower as our current home only has well water and thusly is dependent on an electric pump. I was optimistic that they’d have us back up and running by the end of the day which was, in hindsight, a foolish thing to assume given the level of competence DTE has demonstrated in the past. Last I heard before I went to bed last night was they thought they’d have everyone up by noon today. Noon has come and gone and the power still isn’t back on and DTE won’t even give an estimate at this point other than admit that it could be Monday before we’re up and running again.

So, needless to say, I’m not typing this from home. We’re at my parent’s house with enough clothes to last a couple days just in case DTE continues to perform at the same level they have been recently. I even have a set of work clothes so I can leave straight from here on Monday morning if need be. Fortunately, the weather cooled off thanks to the storm that blew through so we’ve not been sitting around without any fans to keep us cool and sleeping hasn’t been a problem. Still, it makes me miss living in Canton where we rarely lost power and when we did it was usually never out for more than half a day.

All I can say is it’s a good thing DTE has a monopoly on power in this area or I think a lot of people would be looking to switch companies right about now.