warm beautiful afternoon, I lie on the couch reading. The house is so silent. When I turn on my computer it doesn't work. Then I notice the electricity is off.

The old fears start up, is this the end? There has been no storm or earthquake or accident. Just silence. The 7 year old neighbor boy suggest I call someone.

My cell phone. Yes, I call PG&E and piece together from their automated voices that they know about the outage and it will be fixed in 3 hours.

Sure enough, the slick blue and white trucks show up at the end of the street and soon my refrigerator is humming.

Another bullet dodged.