Speed Gibson

I am blogging from an undisclosed location, my home being without power for 1.5 (revised) days when we returned from Iowa this afternoon. I walked the neighborhood, found it was just like 2005 when we lost power for 4.0 days - same set of houses. That repair took maybe two hours, once they showed up, which wasn't until day 4. Meanwhile, Qwest and Comcast trucks were everywhere from the start. I was an angry blogger at the time, given what I still think was prima facia evidence of red-lining first ring suburbs like mine.

What's different this time (fortunately) is that there was no other visible damage to the neighborhood, not even excess downed twigs. Also different is that while they were willing to provide estimated times for resumption of service, all I got this time when I phoned in was "almost certainly by Wednesday."

But I just now got a call from home that the power is back on, about 1 hour after I called in. There are several possibilities:

1. The Xcel crews knew what to do when, even if the people on the phones didn't and were instructed to give lawyerly responses.
2. Xcel didn't know about the outage because I was the first customer to alert them.
3. Xcel remembers me from last time, and doesn't want any media, city, or regulatory inquiries.

I vote for #3.

To recast the old "Our House" moniker, I whined like a liberal while seeking accountability like a conservative.