Electrical Trouble

I came home from work today to find that a variety of random electrical outlets in the house weren't working -- including all of Thing 2's room, the microwave in the kitchen, three of four outlets in my bedroom, most of the outlets in the basement...and the furnace.

With the help of a neighbor who actually knows something about electrical circuits (unlike myself and The Wife), the furnace was brought back to life for the night. And I managed to run an extension cord to get power to the cable modem (and the router), so that Internet and phone service were restored.

But my main computer is still powerless (pending work from a real electrician), and we spent most of the evening wandering around plugging things in, flipping switches, and making sure that the house wasn't burning down. (Our last electrical trouble, a few years back, was smoke from a fluorescent light in the middle of the night, which rousted us all out of the house in the middle of winter and brought the fire department in.)

So I didn't manage to write a "Manga Friday" column for tomorrow, or any other substantial blog content for her or anywhere else. I hope we'll have an electrician in tomorrow, and my life will be back to normal soon afterward, but we'll see.