13 March—Saturday afternoon, just after 4:00, I was about to email to borough warden Gayle Carr a friendly request for documents mentioned in BOLBOWAB minutes, along with friendly suggestions on effective meeting management. I’m always friendly. But then my computer screen went black.

Oh phooey! I ejaculated. (Well, it wasn’t really Oh phooey! But Oh shit! might offend some readers.) My senescent computer did it again. But—mirabile dictu!—the dear old Windows 8.1 desktop came to life again. So it wasn’t the computer. It must have been a power surge. Whew, what a relief. (Even though the three surge protectors between the outlet and the computer, not to mention the one at the entrance, evidently are useless.) Except that the internet was out now. I confirmed that with dialtone-less phones, which work through the cable broadband. Phooey again!

So I checked the idiot box. Just as I thought, cable was out. Altice Cablevision screwed up once again. No surprise. Altice has been screwing up a lot—far too much—in the few years we’ve been stuck with it. In the 45 years since I hooked up to what was Laurel Cablevision in 1977, there had never been many service interruptions at all until Altice USA took over Cablevision from the Dolans. And Altice’s business model also sucks. For captive customers, anyway.

As I was confirming the cable outage via mobile phone with a neighbor, the power went out. It was windy, after all. And it’s CL&P. No matter what it’s called now. But the standby generator came on, so not to worry. Except paying for propane, about a gallon per hour.

Until perhaps a decade ago, power outages on East Street were not only few and far between, but short, seldom lasting even an hour. But since the Everscrew buggers rerouted the feed (doubtless to increase bonuses to corporate executives), we East Street raggies really get screwed. More trees with bigger limbs over a longer distance, along with poorer maintenance. So what else is new? An Everscrew executive explained to me just why the increased frequency and length of outages—and it wasn’t at all comforting, to say the least.

I took advantage of the cable outage to watch some DVDs I’ve been putting off for decades because I hate to get off my recliner and change them. As usual, I fell asleep on the recliner. Or is it in the recliner? When I woke up just after midnight, the cable box commanded me to turn on. A cable box?

But I ignored that command and went back to season two of “No Job for a Lady,” a British sitcom from the early nineties about a Labour MP played by Penelope Keith. Great socialist and conservative humor, obviously written by a wealthy socialist.

Fell asleep again, no fault of Dame Penelope, mind you. It’s just what old farts do in comfortable recliners. When I woke up at about 4, power had been restored, so I reset all the pain-in-the-ass plug-in digital clocks, which had to be set for Daylight Saving Time anyway. So that was that.

But when I woke up this morning, I had to reset the digitals again because old reliably unreliable CL&P did it again . . .