pepco had the gall to send me a bill today.

Oh, let me tell you about my summer.

Three weeks ago Sunday, there was a forecast for a storm to come in, with a tornado warning. About 3:00 in the afternoon, the winds picked up a bit; and then the power went out; and then it rained like hell, with the dark sky and the blowing leaves and everything. That night I stayed in my own apartment (as did my house guest, who was on his way to take the bar exam - fortunately not the next day, but two days later); Monday night, I took refuge with a friend across the street, who had not lost power at all.

The lights came back on Tuesday morning.

(Look, I know it was a fast-moving and very nasty storm. Four people were killed in that storm. I went to the funeral of one of them. I'm not losing perspective here: there are things that suck much more than the power being out for two nights. In fact I didn't even lose anything in my freezer - they said the contents of a full freezer are safe for up to 48 hours, and my power was only out for 38 hours, so. I'm just saying.)

This was, mind you, after this past February, when Snowmageddon deposited two and a half feet of snow on a Friday and then another ten or so inches the following Wednesday. That time, I lost power while I was asleep Friday night, stayed with one friend Saturday night and another Sunday and Monday before my power came back on Tuesday.

And before this morning, when another even nastier (but smaller and evidently less dangerous) storm came in and knocked out the power again. This time they hope to have everyone's power back on by midnight tomorrow, but last I heard they hadn't even assigned a crew to my particular outage, so who knows.

My issue is this: why is EVERYTHING a multi-day event with Pepco? It's because there are so many trees in Montgomery County, apparently. The trees fall in the storms and knock down the wires and cleaning up the fallen trees and the downed wires takes all kinds of extra time that BG&E, DelMarVa Power, Dominion Virginia Power, et al. don't have to deal with. Fine. But what I don't know is, why do the trees always fall on the same lines? I get that it would be prohibitively expensive to bury all the wires. (Bury ALL the wires?) But if we could bury the ones that persistently get knocked down and take whole days to restore, that would be a huge step, wouldn't it? That's if we can't get someone to trim the damn trees to a point where they won't knock down the lines in the first place.

Tonight, my neighbors who have previously taken me in as a refugee are variously without power themselves, or are not at home, or are already hosting company, or still have cats. So I thought about it and wrung my hands for a bit and finally said SOD IT and have checked in to a hotel. (Paying for parking, too.) And I was planning on walking out for some dinner, but now that it's raining again I think I'll order a pizza and let someone else deal with it. (And with the fact that only one elevator in this joint is working.)