Dearest Rachel –
I’ve written to you about power outages before, and most of them have been short-lived and short-ranged, while still leaving one contemplating about just how dependent we are on electricity for just about everything. This one was a little of both, and a little of neither.
For starters, I showed up at church Saturday afternoon for rehearsal, having been warned about a very specific outage that they were dealing with at the Randhurst campus. The power was working just fine – otherwise I wouldn’t have had a job to do (apart from standing by on the off chance that it would be restored prior to the service starting, and having to scramble to get everything ready by the time we needed to open the doors by five) – but for some reason, the air conditioning system wasn’t functioning. The warning had come from our producer, who’d already been at church, handing booth work for a wedding in the morning, and decided to alert the team a couple of hours ahead of time that we might be dealing with temperatures of eighty to ninety degrees in the auditorium.
You might find this funny, but my first reaction was a mild sense of relief. As it happens, the room with the computers in it usually has the air cranked up so high as to actually be rather intolerably chilly, even on the hottest days. Granted, this is for the sake of the electronic equipment, rather than the comfort of whoever happens to be working the various systems, as I can confirm; they need to be kept cool, as overheating would be injurious to their continued functioning. So, it’s a sacrifice I have to put up with – and once reminded of this potential effect on the computer system (to say nothing of the interior heat index Mike was dealing with), my lighthearted relief gave way to a reasonable measure of concern.
What was interesting about the situation when I arrived was that the lobby area was perfectly cool; it was only the auditorium that was suffering from a faulty air conditioning system (and, as it turned out, it wasn’t so much malfunctioning as having gotten low on Freon – by Sunday this was at least temporarily resolved, although by the third service, the system had to be shut down lest it begin to pump in warm air from outside. We think there’s a leak, despite the insistence of the guys who refilled the system on Saturday evening) For the moment, various fans were being brought in to circulate the colder air from the lobby, as well as to cool off the various equipment banks in the audio-visual booth. Mike explicitly stated that the fans (just like the extra A/C, which was presently not working) were not for our benefit, but to keep the machines from overheating (if possible).
In all honesty, while it wasn’t peak comfort, it wasn’t all that awful, either. It was noticeable, no doubt – and the fans made it hard to hear, along with the torrential rain that started as we began our rehearsal – but it was quite tolerable, as far as I was concerned.
Shortly before rehearsal wrapped up, and with a few minutes to go before everything started for real, I got a text from Daniel, asking if the power was out where we were, and how we were dealing with it, if so. Since he and I had been together watching YouTube videos (like we do most early Saturday afternoons these days) when Mike had sent his warning about the situation in the sanctuary, I thought he was just checking up on me to see how things were going, and if they’d improved since he and I had first gotten word.
Silly me.
No, on the contrary; the summer storm that broke out after I arrived at church (and, to be fair, we could hear pounding on the roof of the auditorium if and when we could tune out the noise of the fans) had expanded and grown in strength, to the point where a section of our town had lost power. It even got so bad that the tree in the back corner of our yard fell down, although it wasn’t clear as to whether it was a contributing factor to the power loss at home.
Ironically, while the boys were dealing with the fallen tree and the loss of power (and the lack of entertainment it always precipitates these days) – as well as extending a certain level of curiosity regarding my own situation at church – it so happened that, at the flagship campus a few miles to the southeast, they had in fact lost power with only a few minutes to go before their own Saturday evening service. To be sure, the electricity was restored just before the service actually was scheduled to start, so everything eventually fell into place, it did require everything to be restarted at the last minute, delaying the live stream by a considerable amount of time. Plus, they still have air conditioning issues of their own, as they’ve been in need of replacing their main unit for a month or so; in another ironic touch, they’ll probably have the situation resolved just in time for autumn to set in, and it not to be needed for another year.
But I wasn’t aware of Des Plaines’ issues at the time, nor of the situation at home as I drove to pick up the boys’ dinner order on Saturday night. More than most Saturday evenings, this was going to be necessary for them; not only were they rarely of a mind to prepare themselves a meal (which I can’t fault them for, as I’m rarely in such a mood myself), even if they wanted to prepare something, there were no means to do so. The oven, the microwave, the air fryer and the stovetop all run entirely on electricity. And while Des Plaines was up and running in a matter of minutes, the boys had been essentially in the dark – and growing ever darker – for two whole hours. Why, they couldn’t even grab anything out of the fridge or freezer – or rather, they could, but it would diminish the cool within either compartment, and none of it could be heated up in any event.
We would wind up enduring several more hours of darkness after that, as well. In previous complaints to you when this would happen, I would mention that it was nigh-impossible to get my letter out to you in such circumstances; however, having sent your letter early in the morning, that wasn’t a concern. I’d even set up your old study notes for Sunday ahead of time. So it wasn’t that, or even the general boredom precipitated by lack of internet access that concerned me; as it happened, my phone still had 5G access (as did the boys’, which precluded them from getting too bored, either), although I was tired enough to take advantage of the darkness to get to bed early – after all, I would have to be up by five-thirty the next morning. But I couldn’t quite fall asleep, try as I might, as I was still a little concerned about the whole fridge and freezer situation; I wasn’t looking forward to dealing with more lost food come morning or something.
Still, I did try… although just as I might have been managing to drift off, there were the multiple pings and buzzes of everything coming back to life, after some four hours of stillness (only two hours of which I had to endure, to be fair). Life was back to normal, and for the next couple of hours, it wasn’t concern about the freezer that kept me from sleep, but the sound of the family room television, as the boys proceeded to make up for lost time. If you were still here, I might be able to be distracted from all that (although granted, I wouldn’t get any more rest than I did Saturday night), but as it was, well… let’s just say that I’ve had better nights.
Still, we made it through after those few hours of darkness, and everything is basically back to normal… well, aside from the tree and the swingset in the back yard. But it’s not as if we ever go out back there, in any event. For all intents and purposes, it’s still basically normal.
Anyway, on with the new week; keep an eye on me, honey, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 