Rain and Circuit Breakers

Hmmm...so it's raining...a lot. We don't get rain very often in Southern California, but when we do...we seem to get lots of it all at once. I'm not a huge fan of being out in the rain when it's "dumping," but if it's not raining that hard and if I have rainboots and a jacket, it can be kinda fun. And I must admit that puddles take on a whole new meaning when you're wearing rainboots. It's pretty fun to go tromping through water up to your ankles and your socks are still perfectly dry, it's great! : -)

One thing I do not like about the rain/extra moisture, is what it does to ones hair. Some people that have naturally wavy hair are not very happy when the bangs that they have to straighten get wet, and then un-straighten themselves...and well, it's just not ideal. The bangs start going all over the place and sticking out at odd angles...it's quite the sight, and "cute" is not the word to describe it.

Another thing about the rain...I love what it does to our environment. Southern California is so often brown and dry, I just love it when things turn green and start blossoming after it has rained. I also love going for a walk or a hike after is has rained, everything smells so fresh and nice, it's wonderful. And since I'm on a roll...I also love taking pictures of God's beautiful creation right after it's rained. Something about the freshness of everything and the vivid colors makes me want to capture it in a photograph. But unfortunately, I can never do it justice.

So now, about the circuit breaker. Well, let's just say that before yesterday morning I didn't know very much about them, but now I know quite a bit more. Here's what happened: it all started because my office was really cold when I got to work in the morning (entirely not my fault). There is not really any source of heat for my office, so I have to use a space heater when I'm cold. Normally this is not a problem. However, yesterday I was having a real "intelligent day" you might say...hence all the fun I got to experience. I have two options for space heaters at church, 1) borrowing the one Mr. Peppers has in his office when he's not there (which he wasn't) or 2) using the older (and I mean "old fashioned") one that Christie and I share between our offices. Well, normally I just try to use the old one when Christie isn't using it...but yesterday morning Cyndie was in the PC office using it. So, I decided I was cold enough that I wanted to go borrow J.P.'s from his office. I went and got it and plugged it in and everything was happy for about 20 min. Then I saw Cyndie leave her office and I thought "oh, I can use the other one now..." ('cause actually it puts out more heat than J.P.'s does). Anyway, I got it and plugged it in...and then came my great idea...well, actually it turned out to be not so great...but well, you know. I figured I might as well leave both of them plugged in 'cause then my office would warm up faster and that would be nice. Nice plan until the lights and everything went out about 2 min. later. Hmmm..."is this normal? maybe the rain is causing electrical problems." Not to worry, I know enough about circuit breakers to know that you just go to the circuit box and find the one that is "tripped" and turn it off, then back on. Wahla...everything comes back on. Great! So I proceed to turn all the machines back on and go about my normal business. Hmmm...a few minutes later it happens again...how weird. "Oh well, it must be raining pretty hard or something." Go back through the same routine again. Yay, everything seems to be working again! It's at this point that Mrs. Gallacher comes into the office needing me to help her with something. So, right as we're in the middle of something, everything goes off again. "Good grief, this is ridiculous." And of course Mrs. Gallacher gets very concerned...she doesn't see this occurrence as being normal...(oh, but she doesn't realize that at this point, it's become quite normative)...so while I reset the breaker again, she calls Mr. Gallacher and tells him that "something is wrong with the circuits in the church office...could it be because of the rain?" (isn't it amazing how much alike females think sometimes?) He probably laughed at that, but he was nice and came right over to church. Meanwhile, we were getting smarter and decided to unplug some of our electrical appliances (like the heaters)...but not until after everything went out yet again. "wow, this is really becoming quite the normal thing." Then Mr. G comes in all ready with his big ol' tool belt and starts poking around trying to figure out what the problem is. He has this really cool measuring device that measures the amount of amps (or whatever) going through each individual circuit...so when he measured the one for the office...he discovered that I was trying to run approx. 24 amps/watts (whatever they're called) through a 20 amp circuit..."hmmm, so maybe that was the problem?! Who knew!" So then he looks at me and says, "now Jennifer...let me tell you a little something about circuits and such..." (he probably used to think that shorting out one circuit 4 times in a row couldn't be done...but then he met me) He proceeds to give me Electrical Circuits 101 - lesson #1. During this lesson he did discover one plug in the office that was not on the same circuit as the rest of the room seemed to be, so he proceeded to plug J.P.'s heater into that plug so I could still have both heaters running and not short out the circuit again. Yay, so everything was happy and appeared to be going fine. He and Mrs. G leave and I can finally start on my work. Well, "just kidding" the excitement isn't over yet...Pastor Roger comes in, and in order to get into his office, he is going to have to unplug J.P.'s heater (the cord was in front of his door). Umm, yeah...so another lesson learned, always turn the heater off before you unplug it...well, neither of us had learned that lesson yet, so he just started to unplug it, but quickly stopped when brown smoke started coming out of the outlet and a lovely burning smell filled the office. "okay, let's not do that" and instead he just turned it off and moved it to the floor so he could go in his office. We left it like that for a while. But when it was time to leave, I needed to put the heater back in J.P.'s office...so Pastor Roger unplugged it for me...and then we saw the nice melted outlet holes that were kind of black..."hmmm, well that's interesting." I returned the heater to J.P.'s office and left for the day thinking "why do these things always happen to me anyway?" Also thinking that the problems I had that morning couldn't have been entirely my fault...could they? And so, I thought the story was over...but not quite, because today when I was sitting at my desk, Jonathan comes in and says "you'll never guess what happened to my heater this morning!" "Uh, your heater?...oh dear." "I plugged it in and sparks started coming out of the outlet and it fried the whole thing...I was so shocked I just sat there watching it for a minute...then I unplugged it." Hmmm...how strange. (apparently, I permanently damaged the poor heater when I overwhelmed the circuit). I told him I was very sorry about his heater.

Lessons learned: don't plug too many things into one circuit, don't borrow other peoples space heaters, and when you do blow a circuit...don't just keep resetting it, unplug some things first...it might just help. (like I said, I was having a very "intelligent day" yesterday)

You know what's funny about that story though...is that it's happened to me before. Not exactly the same circumstances, but once with a blow dryer in a dorm bathroom at TMC, multiple times with a surge protector in a dorm room at IBEX, and once again with a surge protector in the library at IBEX...oh boy, what is my problem? This is ridiculous.

Hmmm...that was a very long post. Sorry for the long story, I have a hard time being concise and short-winded, hence the length you see.

Okay, goodnight, I'm going to bed.