Puget Sound Energy has a service status page where they update how things are going in the power restoration process. The repair crews (some from as far away as Kansas) are working 40-hour shifts with eight hours’ rest between shifts. (That article is from a snowstorm a few weeks ago. A manager is quoted as saying. “I’ve been in this industry 30 years, and I haven’t seen anything like this.” Well, now he gets to see it twice in one year, and it’s not even winter yet!) Electricity was restored to my house after only 36 hours. All of a sudden I was popular! (If you can’t be popular for who you are, at least be popular for what you have.)

I know people who have been told that “the lines through the mountain between the main station and the substation are heavily damaged. … Right now with the current information, Thursday night or Friday morning are the best-case scenarios” for having power restored to their neighborhood. But that explanation makes me wonder. First, how do you repair lines that run through a mountain? And second, how do you damage lines that run through a mountain? (Now, it’s entirely likely that by “through” the mountain, they really meant “over the mountain”, but it’s funnier to think that the lines actually run through the mountain.)