Kudos to Toronto Hydro

Our power went out this morning around 8:40. This was a fairly common occurrence in Altanta, but the outages typically lasted 5-10 minutes. So I went about my non-power consuming business this morning, waiting for the lights to come back on. It's a grey day, so there wasn't too much I could do in the way of reading or knitting, so I sorted laundry :).

After about 15 minutes, I decided to call Toronto Hydro to report the problem, as I heard a leaf blower fire up somewhere down the street so thought perhaps my problem was isolated. (The existence of gas-powered leaf blowers escaped me momentarily.) After pressing my way to the "Report an Outage" line at the utility, I was informed that I was in an area for which there was an outage, the reason for the outage (a fire), and the approximate duration (half an hour). Within 5 minutes, the lights were back on.

I have to say that I was very impressed with the (automated) service. I was also reminded that I need to keep my cellphone charged up as I was unable to place outgoing calls on any of our landlines, given that they require AC power. I was able to find a Hydro bill in my filing cabinet using the light on my cellphone, and then give them a call.

Back to my power-consuming tasks now!