Well at least our power outage today didn't compare with the fiasco that hit San Francisco yesterday. I feel blessed. We had a scheduled interruption for about four hours to finish up the job they were doing three weeks back.

One of the workers came by to check on the breaker, so we asked what it was they were doing to the lines. Turns out that when they put up the telephone pole across the street, they encroached on our neighbor's property by about 18 inches. It was a simple mistake. There's a big drainage ditch and common sense says to put up the telephone pole on the edge of the drainage ditch rather than in the middle. But he complained to the council, and they complained to the power company. So here they were, rewiring the entire block to move the pole over 18 inches into the center of the drainage ditch.

Part of me applauds this action. Government doing the right thing by its citizens is a noble virtue. But now they've stuck an electric pole that supplies a quarter of the town smack dab in the middle of a drainage ditch. I've seen this ditch when the monsoon rains hit. Sure hope the pole doesn't get swept away in the next big rain.