Electric Youth

As previously discussed, the weather here is definitely chilly.  We decided to get a wee space heater for our bedroom since our 21-year-old heater isn't exactly efficient in heating our home.  I had it on this morning while I was blow drying my hair.  Apparently what my 60-something year-old house doesn't prefer is to run both my tiny space heater and my fancy-shmancy hair dryer (it's an Elchin and worth every penny if you're in the market for a new hair dryer).  Without any warning, with my hair 3/4 of the way dry, all the power went off in my bedroom, with the closet being the one exception.  Thrilling.

Luckily, I had already dressed and done my make-up.  And I also happened to already know where our fuse box is.  **Notice that I said fuse box and not breaker box.**  There is a difference, which I learned today.  A breaker box is what you probably have in your house.  It's the kind that has what looks like industrial-sized, black light switches that you flip when you blow a fuse.  This is what I've had in every house or apartment I've ever lived in.  It is NOT what we have here.  This is what we have here:

Uh huh.  I mean, what the deuce is all that?  Not a switch to be seen.  Just buckle-looking things (up top, which gave me a bad feeling when I tried to pull on them) and round colors at the bottom that were neither buttons (I tried pushing them to no avail) nor able to be pulled out.  Even after reading all the notes on the door to the fuse box, I still had absolutely no idea how to resolve my no-power problem (the only instructions weren't really instructions- just a note stating that a certain kind of wire was okay to use, but no instructions as to what wires should be replaced or how to replace them, and of course L is still in New York and not due to come home until Friday night.  Waiting for him to return and help me figure it out wasn't exactly an option. The one piece of helpful information I found was that the fuse I blew not only covers our bedroom, but also the hallway, the front porch, the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen.  SUPER.  Why the guest bedroom, the bathroom, and the office all have their own fuses is completely beyond me.  The office and bathroom are both tiny.  I promise they don't need their own fuses, but then, what do I know?  I didn't have much time to debate about solutions, though, as the whole thing had already eaten up 10 minutes of my morning and my hair still needed to be dried.  I relocated to the bathroom and finished getting ready for work, then snapped a pic of the fuse box, grabbed my MagLite so I'd be able to see when I got home, and headed off to work. 

My hero of the day is one of my co-workers.  He's definitely in his late 60s/early 70s, and he's done everything in his life from serving in the military to working on a farm to working in Corporate America.  I knew he'd have knowledge of some kind to help save me from a night of eternal darkness.  He laughed when I told him I had no idea how to do anything with what my fuse box had presented me with and explained that all I need do was unscrew the blown fuse and replace it with a new one of the same size and strength.  So after work I stopped by a hardware store and picked up a new fuse and after flashlighting my way through the house a la a burglar straight out of The Pink Panther or Scooby Doo, I successfully changed the fuse and VOILA!  We're back in business!  So now I know how to work an old-school fuse box, and you, my dear readers, do, too.  The only down side is that I definitely missed this week's episode of Vampire Diaries, which is obviously tragic because those guys are my Thursday night eye candy.  If you don't watch, you're in luck- there's a week-long marathon next week- you can thank me later for that info- to kick off their winter hiatus (sadness!).  But hooray because that means my summer favorite (and apparently L's), Pretty Little Liars, will be back in a matter of weeks.  Woo hoo!