Forgive a somewhat "windy" post........but this is too good to not share.
My wife is a wonder among women....intelligent, caring, the center of my universe. It took me three tries to find her, but the wait was worth it. Up until this point I had collected various antique stationary engines (gasoline) and she tolerated that with a simple rolling of her eyes and a "I don't get it" attitude. When I began fussing over my Vidhata, mounting generators, etc.....the attitude got a little more challenging.
"Our power has never gone out for more than an hour. You spend way too much time on that thing......we'll never need it." "It's noisy." "It smells." etc. etc.
Well, last night at 6:30 pm while our kids and grandchildren were visiting for dinner....poof! T.V. quit. Lights went out. No one said anything except "Oh, great. No cartoons for the kids". I waited. Patiently. After an hour or so, I calmly asked her to back her car out of the garage so I could roll "that thing" from its storage position into the center of the garage. I quietly cranked up the beast, made note of the voltage and began stringing extension cords into the house (still waiting for my circuit breaker lock out kit). Since it was getting dark, I plugged in two lamps and my coffee maker....ignoring the refrigerator for awhile, as I was sure the juice would be back on soon. I turned to my daughter in law, the only other coffee drinker, and asked in a loud gloating tone......."May I offer you a cup of DIESEL coffee? Brewed by the standby generator that SOMEONE had the foresight to build?"
My wife ignored this and kept setting the table, placing the still warm food and inviting everyone to sit down. After a couple of minutes, I rose and got the coffee, placed it in front of the daughter in law and asked "Does everyone have enough light? Would you like me to turn on.....oh, I don't know...four or five MORE lamps?" My wife just sat there, quietly eating.
After dinner, she asked if the grandkids would like to bathe before going home (they live quite a distance away) so they could go right to bed after getting there. "Oh!" I said, in a smirking tone....."Let me plug in our tankless water heater!" I walked to the door, looked outside and said "Oh, look. No one else in the neighborhood has lights! Thanks to some resident electrical genius, WE DO!"
By this time my stepson was laughing his head off as he realizes that, like revenge, gloating is a dish best served cold. They finally packed up and headed home before my wife finally said something. "Do you think you should shut that off now? It's almost nine o'clock and people do have to go to work tomorrow....." I agreed, even though I had not plugged in our refrigerator since the initial outage.
I had called the power company and their estimation was 9:30 for power back on. By 11:30 we realized this wasn't the case and the power did not come back on until 4:00 am this morning. It looks like our fridge held the cold alright so we didn't lose any food.
So, finally, the closing quote. I asked my wife if she now saw the reason for "being prepared" (yes, I was a Boy Scout). Her only comment?
"It needs a better muffler........."
