The joys of alternating current

There are a lot of things in life that most of us take for granted: our health, our car starting every time we insert the key, the love of our family. But one thing that flies way under our radar is electrical service, because it's always there. Well, almost always. The missus and I had friends to the house Sunday for dinner and the Steelers game. We were finishing up our meal and just starting to get into the Steelers-Browns game when, POOF, the lights went out. Fortunately, the missus is all about ambience, so candles already were burning throughout the house. We fired up a couple of old oil lamps and waited for the power to return. Turns out, it was a long wait, until about 4:30 p.m. Monday. I have a generator, but with the price of gas, it seemed more cost-effective to just ride it out and toss some bad lunch meat and milk when it was all over. Some people in our area waited longer than we did for their power to return. But who are we to gripe when people in other locales have it much worse? Imagine being a resident of coastal Texas. I talked to my father-in-law in Cincinnati Monday night, and they had been without power since Sunday afternoon. They got an estimate of two to four days for resumption of their service. So, again, we had it pretty easy. And even though we missed the Steelers game Sunday night, we adapted. We just sat around the table and talked to our friends for several hours, engaging in the lost art of conversation. Fortunately, newspaper people are rarely at a loss for words. And the really good news: Wine-bottle openers are still manually operated.