Originally Published June 17, 2010

Our modern world has a ton of background noise, even in the wee hours at the beginning of the day. I woke up to dead silence this morning. The alarm clock was blank, my first official notice something was amiss. My reliable and battery-backed-up watch said it was 5:39 AM.

"No problem, the electricity is never off very long, it'll be back in a few seconds." I stayed put, watching the ceiling fan do nothing while a random synapse misfire in the back of my mind wondered if June 17th was a special day to some goofy terrorist organization. A few seconds of introspection sped by until reality kicked back in and I realized that the ceiling fan was still not moving so it would soon be getting HOT! I know, it's only June 17th, but this is central Texas, we start summer in April.

The next thing I noticed was a lack of beeping or other electronic alarms. Such noise is common around our abode when the uninterruptable power supplies lose their feeds. Nothing but silence, so the power had been off for quite a while.

I put on some clothes and walked out onto the driveway. The new subdivision across the street had working streetlights, but the church next door had no lights on their sign. No lights on the school to the northeast and nothing down the street to the south. Two doors down Jim's big American flag was hanging proudly, a pleasant sight as the sun came up but the lights around it were not lit. Another synapse misfire: "Does that change them into darks?"

Coffee is always nice when waking earlier than normal, but the pot's electric and finding the propane camp stove or firing up the motor home's generator is out of the question. Seriously, there's a McDonalds 2.5 miles away, I could have a cup on my table in 8 minutes without using my own hydrocarbons for direct electricity generation.

Real life must go on, might as well get ready for work

It's a good thing the master bath has a window. It's an especially good thing for me and my cube neighbors at work that my last water heater replacement was a 50 gallon model not a tankless. For the non-techies in the audience, this means I had hot water for my shower. A tankless requires electricity to heat the water as it is used, my old fashioned tanked model keeps a quantity of water hot at all times. This makes them somewhat less efficient than tankless, but the water remains hot for a while when the electricity is off. No wind so turbines would not have been a solution. The sun was just coming up so even a huge solar array would not have heated the water for a shower. Score one for inefficiency!

I'd have gotten online or on the TV to see how widespread the electric outage was, but alas, no electron flow means no electron to photon conversion, and no information superhighway data to display. So much for maintaining a normal morning routine.

Hmm, I really hope that was toothpaste.

And where's the cat, did the 15 or 20 minutes of UPS beeping drive him into hiding?

I was dressed and all ready for work at about 6:30. My wife was already taking the day off but I thought I'd wake her as I left in case her morning plans involved electricity. I was literally reaching towards her shoulder when the LED on the front of the computer flickered then stayed on. The power was back, ceiling fans running, computers booting, life would soon be back to normal!

I say all of this to make the point that there is a reason electricity is also referred to as power. It can do great things when working properly even if we take it for granted as nothing but a commodity. But when it's out, it suddenly becomes very, very important.

In some odd way, the lack of electricity was more noticeable that its presence, for no reason other than it has been present every morning of my life.
That presence, more than the repair of this morning's outage, is a far more significant accomplishment.