dark

I was about to go to bed when my wife stepped out of the shower and turned on her hair dyer. There was a snap sound and all was dark. I didn't think there was a problem- Some one must have hit a phone pole or maybe I forgot to pay my electricity bill. It was late and the darkness surprised me for a moment, and I stood there like an idiot, wondering if I had a flashlight. Or batteries for a flashlight.

After a few more seconds we managed to locate a candle and something to light it with. I ran downstairs to see if everyone else's power was out- but was again surprised to see that every one's lights were OK. Great. I guess I didn't pay the electric bill. On the way back up stairs I smelled something that made me almost gag. It was a smell that I've only encountered a few times in my life: taking garbage out to a dumpster, finding a dead mouse or bird in the garage, and passing roadkill along Utah roads. Images of dead animals brought into the house by our neighbor's yappy Chihuahua, or better yet, the dead Chihuahua filled my head. I went under our stairs to look for the dead body or whatever was the source of that death smell. Nothing. With power outage and a nasty smell floating around our apartment I knew that some thing was wrong.

We figured that we must have tripped a breaker somewhere when the hair dryer was turned on. Finding a breaker box in a hundred year old house would be interesting to say the least. A small door on the stairs opened up to some water pipes. Looking around the outside of the house didn't yield any results either. With all the wires running around the walls of our house, you'dl think that there would be a box somewhere connecting it all together. Running around our creepy old house in the dark makes you feel like you'd see the kid from the Grudge at any second. I looked up at the windows expecting to see a dark face looking inward at me. I'm always looking over my shoulder like some chainsaw massacre was going to happen at any second. Nope. No bloodshed, no creepy Grudge kid. Just me and my wife, and the neighbor's yappy Chihuahua.

So after calling our landlords they mentioned that our fuse box was located on the stairs leading up to our apartment. Indeed there was a small grey box that I had previously ignored (not knowing what the crap was inside it was). I opened the box and found that the rotten dead animal smell was actually from a blown fuse and oily melty wires. After a quick stop at Home Depot I changed the fuse and like magic all of our appliances beeped back to life. Hmmm.. One fuse for the entire apartment. That makes sense.