My Bestie, Danyelly, is coming into town tonight for a friend's birthday and I'm meeting them after work for karaoke (pronounced Kail-A-Oh-kay) so I needed to get a little fancy today. Also, it's around twenty-degrees-fahrenheit degrees today, and we have two gaping holes in our apartment awaiting attention. I recently picked up a little Holmes space heater that works tremendously well.
The space heater was working it's little blower off, warming my room nicely, and I plugged in my hair dryer to the surge protector, thinking "I probably shouldn't plug both of these in." Apparently, I should have drunk more of my morning coffee before attempting to work with electrical appliances, because that thought got stuck in pre-caffeine brain matter. Of course, part of my adventurous self was wondering what would happen, since I've been really careful about unplugging the 12.5 amp heater so as not to blow a fuse. Curiosity won, I turned the dryer on and everything shut. Off. completely.
I tried to mess with the fuses, to no avail, and again there was a little niggling voice whispering "It's not the fuses," that was ignored. There are only three fuses in our fuse box. One of them was obviously not for my room since it shut off the kitchen when I removed it, one didn't do anything new when I changed it, and the other we had no spare for.
I was going to leave it and just buy a 20 fuse at some point during the day so I could try the one we didn't have a replacement for, but when I went to get water out of the pitcher in the fridge, the fridge was dark. One can't leave a refrigerator without power, even in 20 degree weather with two gaping holes in the ceiling. The apartment is chilly, but I don't think it's down to forty degrees. Yet. Plus, the stuff in the freezer would never survive.
Did you know there's a little black reset button on the end of your surge protector???? Neither did I!! So who can blame me?!, really, for going and pounding on the super's door to help me?
Victor, our super, and I have a really good relationship. He misguidedly wanted me to be his girlfriend, and despite a small language barrier, I was tempted. A little bit. He's also twenty years younger than me, which he swears is not a deterrent, but I think he may be a little impulsive in that area.
Anyway. I wake Victor up, and he says he'll help me in a minute. I'm late leaving for work at this point and a bit panicked. Lesson number one: Never Panic. It never turns out well.
I waited about three minutes. I went back and knocked, rapidly and a lot, on Victor's door again. I'm like, "C'mon! I'm late for work!" I'm getting pushy; trying not to; failing. He protests that he must get dressed and I tell him to just throw on a t-shirt. He finally appears out of his apartment and goes in search of the fuse.
He comes in and checks the fuses, changes a couple, puts them back. He comes in my room and does something to the surge protector and everything starts humming. "I'm gonna kill you" he says.
"I did that!" I cry in self-defense. "I turned it on and off multiple times!"
"You know about the black button?" he says.
I bend down and look at the top of the surge protector and see that there is a black reset button. Oy.
"I'm sorry!" I hold my face in embarrassment. "I'm so so sorry! I'm Sorry Victor!" I am effusively apologetic. He smile/smirks at me. "It's ok" he says. "You're late for work," he throws over his shoulder as he walks out the door.
"I am. SUPER late."
I'm gonna have to bake something for Victor.
Luckily, no one was at work when I arrived fifteen minutes late, even though the train was just pulling out of the station when I arrived, which has been happening every. single. day. for about two weeks. It doesn't matter what time I leave the house. I can hear it when I'm coming down the stairs into the station; pulling in, Mocking me. I can't run for it because I have peroneal neuropathy which is triggered when I run down stairs. It is another lesson in not being attached to events you can't control because my connecting train always arrives just as I am stepping on to the platform. Here is a great parable about these kinds of things: Morning Meditation
In the past I would have spent the remainder of the day beating myself up and planning what to do to make it up to Victor. Age and disappointment have jaded me, for the better, I think, because now I'm just really happy everything's working, that I know now how to fix any power surge outages, and no one was here when I came in.
The lesson of stay calm and don't get dramatic is emphasized and maybe learned. Maybe.
I am a little bit fancy and ready for karaoke (Kail-a-oh-kay) and will be able to be warm when I get home tonight. (I used the socket in the kitchen to blow dry my hair). Stay calm and Improvise.
Fuses, blow dryer, space heater, fancy, lessons, lesson, meditation, chilly, fahrenheit, freezer, refrigerator, sure protector, panic
Fuses, blow dryer, space heater, fancy, lessons, lesson, meditation, chilly, fahrenheit, freezer, refrigerator, sure protector, panic
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