The Pecan Park Eagle

Where was I when the lights went out?

About five minutes into the Super Bowl, the power went out in our house. I did what I normally do under these circumstances, I explored and used all the words I know that are expressions of unhappiness over unpleasant, unforeseen bummer events.

My sweet wife immediately exercised her right to say that she found my reactions to the situation as totally unacceptable, so I tried taking what I thought might be  a more constructive path. I searched for in the dark and found a candle. Then I lit the candle and used the flickering light for retrieving the emergency number for Center Point Energy that we have pinned to a wall in the kitchen. After Ike, you might think I would know it by heart, but that was not the case.

After cascading through the automatic robot answering service long enough, I finally guessed that the “gas leak” button might get me quicker human contact than any other. As it turned out, I was right, one of the few times that has ever happened in my normal experience with emergency robot numbers.

"How come the power's just off on our block?"

CenterPoint couldn’t explain why only our block was suddenly shut down without power. “It’s probably a fuse,” the CP woman told me. “We’re dispatching someone out there now to check on it. Of course, someone may have run into a pole somewhere – or a bird could’ve blown out a transformer, but, whatever, we’ll have your power back on by 10:00 PM, most likely.”

Great! They’ll have it back in time to hear either a Steeler or a Packer QB tell us that’s he’s “going to Disneyworld. I’ll just have to go watch it in a restaurant or a sports bar. I invited Norma to come with me, but she doesn’t give a rip about sports. She turned me down. Once she had heard Christina Aguilera sing, and misplay Our National Anthem, my wife’s interest in the rest of the night, except for halftime, was gone. She chose to stay home and meditate in the dark and not worry about when the lights might return.

I decided to drive down the block to the bar at Los Tios Mexican Restaurant. I don’t drink, but I know the place as a diner – and I knew they had a great HD TV there, with few customers. I could get by with iced tea, guacamole, chips, salsa, and a little electricity.

"Don't eat anything!"

“Don’t eat anything,” Minnie offered. “Maybe you would be better off watching the rest of the game from some place like Best Buy. You’ve already had a big barbeque lunch today and you don’t need to top it off with Mexican food.”

“Best Buy, huh,” I thought. “Wonder why I didn’t think of that option?’ Then I went out to my car and drove alone to the bar at Los Tios. I did OK there, I thought. All I had to eat were chips, guacamole, salsa, and one tiny single order of a chili con queso corn puff. That wasn’t too bad, was it?

There was one guy at the table next to me doing a steady plow on Martini Row. All others came and went, but all shared one common trait. They were all either Packer fans or pick-a-winner people. I was the only fan at Los Tios pulling for the Steelers.

My adult son Neal join me in the fourth quarter after he got off work.And Norma called with about four minutes to go to let me know that our power had been restored. It was really my two-minute warning, but I finished my tea and stayed for the end of the game, anyway.

GO Steelers! GO CenterPoint! You both need to get your acts together.

Tags: Super Bowl

This entry was posted on February 7, 2011 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.