Ok... I think we're up and running

As fate would have it, we cut our Italy vacation short to rush home and... sit in the dark.

Around 8pm Friday night, the power cut out. Thankfully, Ceil had stashed some matches and candles, and I had exercised enough foresight to empty several bottles of wine, so we had ready-made candle holders. The kids we're a bit anxious, but I re-assured them that we had plenty of candles, and that I was capable of creating more candle holders quite rapidly.

The gas cook top continued to work, so instead of roasting potatoes, we pan-fried them. We cooked up a kilo or two of mussels, and hauled ice cream out of the freezer. We gorged ourselves by candlelight. Ceil led the kids in a few hands of cards, while I double-checked the supply of candle-holders.

The blackout gave us an excuse tp try out one of the fireplaces in our house. The landlord has several cords of firewood stacked behind the barn. After a few trips to the woodpile, and a setting light to a week's worth of the International Herald Tribune, we had a roaring fire. We kept it going most of the night, and re-lit it early the next day. It was very therapeutic. And we're really prepared for the next outage, having set aside several new candle-holders.

On Saturday afternoon, we managed to call the house-keeper -- a lovely woman with less English than I have French. It's hard enough to communicate in person, but speaking with her over the phone feels like playing charades in a very dark room. I seemed to get my point across, however, and she drove out to meet us.

Turns out it was not a general power failure, or wild-cat strike by the local utility workers -- the problem was limited to our house. Apparently, we were running too many appliances (and laptop computers) simultaneously, and managed to trip the main fuse for the property. Madame Gerrard showed us the fuse box (about 40 yards down the drive-way), and we re-set it.

As I walked back to the house to see if the lights were back on, I heard some terrifying shrieks through the windows -- I feared the worst: some accident involving a child catching on fire, or worse, one of my laptops being broken. But not to worry: the sound I heard was Miles celebrating our return to the 20th century -- running through the house, hooting and flipping switches on and off.

So, we're back on the grid: Internet, electricity, running water. All the comforts of home... except the ability to pick-up the phone and speak to someone in English... sigh.

Miss you folks.