Things You Can't Do Without Electricity

Yesterday morning, a fuse blew. This is a fairly common occurrence, so I calmly flipped the breaker and moved on with getting ready. After work, I came home to warm up my leftovers for dinner and the power went out again.

So I, being the reasonably electric savvy person that I am, checked the breaker box, checked the outside main breaker box, and flipped all of the breakers (although none of them were tripped) just to make sure. Nothing. No power at all.

Then, my wall started bzzzzzzt-ing. This was a bit disconcerting. So I flipped the main breaker to stop the electric flow - still bzzzzzzzzt-ing. Crazy!!

Now I freely acknowledge that I'm no electrician, but I'm not an idiot either. Long story short, 3 different people came by to look at it - all of them told me on the phone "you just need to flip the breaker." Hello! I tried that - none believed me.

Fortunately, the third visitor was an electrician and was able to "fix" my electricity although he's not sure a) how it ever worked, apparently my circuit board is missing a key component or b) exactly why it's working now because the "fix" should not have fixed it. I find this information a bit scary, but we're going with it for now.

So, thanks to my flat's 24 hour hiatus from the juice, here are my observations of things you cannot do these days without electricity.

1. Get hot water. You can't even boil it because the kettle and stove require electricity.
2. Have heat.
3. Get on the internet. We only have wireless, so no electricity = no router.
4. Turn on your lamp.
5. Drown out the street noise with a fan at night.
6. Warm up your leftover chicken fajitas that you made with your special seasoning packet from America.
7. Keep your frozen food frozen.
8. Keep your refrigerated food cold.
9. Wash or iron your clothes.
10. Dry your hair.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but a quick start.

The positives of no electricity include: no constant hum and you're forced into conversation as your means of entertainment.

In this case, I think the negatives outweigh the positives. Hooray!! It's up and running again!