Electrical

We lost electrical service to our house for 98 hours. That’s just over four days. And during these four days I discovered something odd. I sort of liked it. It feels wrong, saying that when over a hundred thousand of my fellow citizens are still without power. The constant question around the city these days […]

The 19th story about our renovation appeared in today’s paper.

What with all the foofaraw trying to get back on the internet and dealing with spambots and the parental visitation and bloody murder and the holidays and so forth, I almost forgot to mention some good news: We had much of our house rewired earlier this month. Now we have power in the ceiling, meaning […]

The electricians got started on our house yesterday. We didn’t even know they’d been there until we realized we had no juice in our bedroom. (A common problem for old married couples, or so I’ve heard. Rim shot.) I had to break out the oil lamp for the evening — just like old times. As […]

I bought a bunch of these from Classic Accents. They’re old-style push-button switches, which our house has still has in a few places. We’re expecting that some of the old switches won’t survive the rewiring of our house, so we’ll have some replacements on hand. Mostly, though, these will serve to restore push-button functionality to […]

Take a nighttime drive down Bienville, from Galvez to Jefferson Davis. It’s dark. There’s a house with some lights near Tonti, another near Gayoso. Generators, I guess. There are no street lights. The Bienville corridor is dark. Except for our street. When we got power restored to our house, it also resulted in two more […]

Today is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. We’ve been getting up before dawn since Xy started back to school. Without electricity, that’s kind of a pain. The first thing I do in the morning is light an oil lamp. So I’ve been looking forward to the days getting longer. This morning […]

Yesterday, after a wait of two weeks, our electrical work passed the city inspection. It’s up to code, and we’re ready to take power. (Even when we do get powered up, we’ll only have electricity in about half of our upper floor. Sometime later in 2006 we’ll have to get the rest of the house […]

Our electrician came by tonight (with a crew of old friends from Brooklyn) and hooked our generator up to our electrical panel. Now we can run what’s left of our wiring, post-Katrina, off a gasoline-fueled internal combustion engine. So tonight, for the first time in over a hundred days, a few electric light bulbs burned […]

The electricians started work on our house today. Also, the plumber got the city inspector to come by and certify us for getting our gas service restored. Also, Xy made the cut. She was amongst the 200 teachers (out of over a thousand applicants) who got called back for an interview (for one of 60 […]

As I’ve done more demolition on the lower floor of our home, I’ve discovered the termite damage is a bit more extensive than I’d thought. I’d been thinking something like 15 studs would need to be replaced or reinforced. I figured I could do that myself. My electrician advised me to get it done before […]

My dear friend Mike Kaplan came by our house this afternoon to assess the electrical situation. You see, Mike is a licensed electrician, and right about now an electrician is the best friend you can have. He looked things over and assured me that we could probably get the bottom level of the house re-wired […]

Our day here at the University started with a blackout, which lasted about two hours. I took pictures.

I had some electrical work done on our house today. I hired a friend, Mike Kaplan, to do the work. He in turn employs two guys named Josh, both of whom play in a local band, and one of whom is also a friend of mine. They spent the day here, and installed two new […]

A few weeks ago our electrician friend, Mike Kaplan, spent an evening examining some of the fucked-up old wiring in our house. He’s going to be back to do some work in March, but in the meantime he advised me that the our fire hazard electric heater probably just needed a new switch. I tracked […]

Tag: Electrical

Revelations in Blackout

Story #19

Light from Above

(No Longer) Waiting for the Electrician

Push My Button

Sweet Light

A Solstice Miracle

Power Next Year

Generator

Better and Better, Worse and Worse

Electric Termites

The Electrician

Blackout

Switched Switch