VIRB

I've had a nightmare with utilities lately. A couple of weeks ago, after a few of days of rain, a large tree fell off the side of a neighbors hill. It took out a power pole which pulled down the next power pole. I lost power and cable service. The power company worked through the night to get the power back on but in the process of putting in two new poles they cut the underground phone lines. I had power back but the internet was gone.

The phone company came the next day and ran a temporary phone line to get our sevice back on. I was back in business. Both of the power poles had transformers on them. One burst leaking oil all over the ground and into the creek. That required a major clean up operation that had heavy equiment working along the creek behind our house for days. It was a long week.

Cable had been knocked out too. Not a big concern, my internet is DSL through the phone company. They finally came around to fix the cable and cut my phone line in several places putting in their new underground line. So now i had cable, but no phones again. The phone company came out and laid a temporary line across my back yard to get me back up and running until they could free up a crew to bury a new service.

The crew finished their clean up around the creek, the utilities got their new mains buried again causing another day without service, and all that was left was my new phone service across the back yard. We had another rain, which wet the temporary line laying across my yard and made internet very sketchy. Then the phone company sent out a crew to bury the new service.

The crew came the day after the rain and it was too wet to dig. I told them to let it dry up over the weekend and come back monday. They showed back up the next day, Good Friday, and said they thought it was dry enough. They got their line in, across the underground power and cable, without messing anything up, so far so good, but then got their tractor stuck in my back yard. They brought in another, larger, tractor and drove all through my neighbors yard getting the first tractor pulled out of the mud. My neighbor wasn't happy.

Finally I had everything working again at the same time. The yard was cleaned up, I must say they did a good job, and the creek was cleaned up. Everything back to normal after several weeks of drama. Then i came home yesturday to equipment down by the creek again. The power company had installed two new poles. One had hit the phone line as I said. Apparantly the other hit the sewer main.

It had taken awhile for the sewer to stop up and when it did they discovered the line was broken. The utility department was digging it up to repair it. First they dug up the main phone line, there went my phones again, then the new cable line. Here we go again.

Over the past few weeks it seems that my internet connection has been down more than up. Of course I have the new book and website out so i have been trying to keep up with that. I am blogging right now from an unsecured wireless network I was able to piggyback on. I guess that is fitting with the ArchAngelxx storyline. I feel like CG hacking into a network to admin ArchAngel from the front seat of his car. I am sitting on a construction site, in my truck, typing away on my laptop.

Hopefully the phone and cable guys will get their lines fixed without tearing anything else up, but i doubt it. One will come run theirs then the other will come and tear it out. I don't know if it will ever all work at the same time. Until they get it fixed I will just be CG, blogging from my front seat at a construction site somewhere in Mooresville, North Carolina.

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