DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Continuing my theme of holiday unpleasantness… we woke on New Year’s Eve to learn that the power was out.

One of the ironies of grid-tied photovoltaic systems is that, sunshine or no, they don’t generate electricity if there’s no grid. Or in English, when the power goes out, the PV array goes out too.

It wouldn’t have been such a big deal if we didn’t have out-of-state guests en route for a fancy dinner… I had baguettes in the works, a pair of upscale pork tenderloins — yes, actual meat products! — soaking up my special garlic-and-peppercorn brine, and two nice bottles of Pinot Noir in the cellar.

PG&E’s automated telephone system informed me that the outage was known, but “repair crews are not able to access the equipment,” causing me to picture a group of burly linemen standing around a locked toolshed looking for the key. The outage reporting system suggested I should call back at 10:00 AM.

At 10:00 AM, the message suggested calling back at 2:00 PM, an ominous sign — nine hours with no power and no progress. The skies had cleared, but our lights were still out.

At 1:30 PM (call me impatient), the message said that I needn’t call back until 10:00 PM! Our inbound guests, who had been killing time elsewhere until we had power (or at least news of power), changed their plans and drove to visit family farther up the coast.

Meanwhile, my baguette dough sat in a bowl in the kitchen of my cold house. I couldn’t bake it, but didn’t have the heart to throw it away. It was growing like the Blob, although a lot slower, and without actually eating me, my family, my house, and the rest of Sonoma County.

Newly without dinner plans, or a suitable mood for New Year’s Eve, we headed downtown to drown our sorrows in a cup of tea and a selection of vegan cookies. Free holiday celebration tip: if you’re looking to cheer yourself up, stay the hell away from vegan cookies. But I digress. Before drowning our sorrows, we nearly drowned our car; Highway 12 just east of Sebastopol was under three feet of water. This was probably the reason PG&E couldn’t access its equipment. They probably couldn’t access the town.

But PG&E came through, somehow, restoring power about 4:30, which gave me just enough time to flip the baguette dough into rough batards and shortly thereafter (a paltry 20-minute rise) onto a not-exactly-hot-yet baking stone before rushing to join friends for an impromptu, post-power-failure dinner.

We brought the pork. It was great, or so I’m told.

The baguettes turned out surprisingly well considering that the dough had been rising more than twice as long than necessary. I expected the yeast to have expired, but I got a decent oven spring. Having no heat in the house contributed to this success; every 18 degrees of temperature change doubles or halves a dough’s rise time — above 40° or so, anyway.

So, all things considered, we ended up having a nice time on New Year’s anyway, despite those vegan cookies.