Almost panic time

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I never sit down, write a post, and then publish it.

Typically, I go through all those writing processes that I learned at school. Organize my thoughts, jot out some points, and make almost silly things to help in the process. The only difference these days is that I do it right in the WordPress editor instead of pencil and paper. Once, I think I’ve got it right, I’ll schedule it to appear at the appropriate time. Once scheduled, I’ll do some proofreading to make sure that I’m somewhat literate in presentation. As we all know, there are times when stuff slips through and that’s OK, I guess.

There are two major posts that appear here – “This Week in Ontario Edublogs” and “My Week Ending …” There’s no way that I could sit down and write those in just one sitting. Life is too complicated. As a result, I’ll do it over two or more sittings to get things the way I want and then schedule it. WordPress then does its magic and it appears at the appropriate time.

Over the weekend, I got started on “My Week Ending” – it would have been some time on Saturday. I wrote what I wanted, scheduled it and then went about other things. My typical routine is to finish it off Sunday morning. That way, I can include “Whatever happened to” which doesn’t appear until Sunday morning at 5am anyway.

It was at 5:14 when it happened. The power went out. It’s not a frequent happening and usually it’s just for a second or two and then everything comes back. It’s a reminder that we don’t have a 100% smart home because there are lots of clocks to reset.

Yesterday was different. I finished doing what I was doing because my access point is on a UPS that would give me 10-15 minutes but then it died. Power had not been restored. Weird. I checked the Essex Power Lines website on my phone and they were indeed showing an outage in LaSalle, two towns over. There was a form to report your issue and I did that. Looking out the front window, it was strangely still dark. No lights anywhere except for the neighbour’s driveway lights which are solar powered.

Then, I had Blogger’s Panic. My “My Week Ending” post was only partially complete. And it was scheduled to appear at 5 this afternoon.

Now, normally the power would come back on in a timely fashion but it was the weekend and a holiday weekend at that. We also had plans that involved being on the road for most of the day. Only a truly geeky person would suggest going somewhere with free wifi so that I could finish a post. I started to think of ways to suggest this and keeping my marriage intact.

Then, Jaimie appeared. It was another scheduled event! This one had real consequences if I missed it so off we went. All the while, I’m thinking about how to finish the post.

Besides finding free wifi in some place that had power, I came up with a couple of better options.

• tether my computer to the phone and use its data – had I gone over my limit this month?
• finish the post on the phone – that would be so difficult!
• edit out the stuff that would be embarrassing and write a mea culpa later
• reschedule it and hope to get to it later

When I returned an hour later, the power was still off. This was getting real. This was hitting the fan. This was …

Just as we were about to leave for the day, I begged out to use the washroom one more time. Just then, the power returned! I suggested that the clocks needed to be reset and typed furiously. Update and the post was good. Or as good as it was going to be.

It was only once we got in the car and were moving that I remembered that I hadn’t hit the washroom. Fortunately, it was a more marriage-friendly suggestion that we hit a public washroom.