Deja vu

Remember this?

It's going to happen again, supposedly. Like in 26 minutes.

We've been notified by our wonderful friends at Hillwood that Dominion Virginia has to cut the power tonight.

From their letter:

"In an effort to improve service reliability in your area, Dominion Va. Power Company will be performing maintenance in our neighborhood. In order to perform this work it will be necessary to interrupt your electric service for approximately 4 hours (bold replaces the underline in the original document).

[Commentary: Bullshit. Unplanned service interruption hasn't been a problem in some time; my guess is perhaps since last summer, when thunderstorms happen and power outages happen. I understand. Copy editing gripe: The name of the company isn't Dominion Va. It's Dominion Virginia.]

"Your electric service will be interrupted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 12am until 5am.

[Commentary: Hmmm, I thought they said it would four hours; midnight to 5 a.m. is five hours. But whatever. Copy editing gripe: adding a space after "12" and "5" and inserting periods for correctness - a.m. - isn't hard.]

"We regret any inconvenience you may be caused by this interruption in service and will make every effort to keep the duration of the outage to a minimum."

[Commentary: If they really regretted it, they wouldn't be doing it.]

So we're down to 15 minutes now. Or so I'm led to believe.

We had one instance some time ago where a contractor was forced to turn off the hot water rather early in the morning - like 8 a.m. Emergency repairs or some other crap.

Except that by 7:45, the water was cold as ice. I know. I was in the shower. My wife didn't even make it into the shower that day.

I called for an explanation.

"The repairmen arrived early and decided to start work," I was told. Though I don't really remember her being sorry for any sort of real inconvenience.

And then there's that time I linked above. Power was supposed to be cut. The time came, went and passed with nary a hitch.

So which will it be this time? I've got my flashlight at the ready, just in case they surprise us all and follow through as planned.

Only 10 more days of this.

I can't wait to get out.