These vines

Shortly after we moved into our house here, the vines in this vineyard parcel were planted. To me, the parcel just looked like a field and, when the plowing started, I thought oh no they're building a house! Turns out that the growers were just re-planting a parcel that had been ripped up a year or so earlier. We've since watched this parcel of sauvignon blanc grow and mature into now nearly twenty-year old vines.

These vines are almost twenty years old.

For the past month or so, we've been experiencing what they call micro coupures de courant (micro power outages) almost once a day. The power cuts out for about a second then returns. Our computers and television go off, the modem/router (and therefore the internet connection) go off, and the fridge and freezers go off (but they come back on), which is not good for them. And certain lights and clocks are knocked out. Joy. Our main circuit breaker doesn't trip (well, it did once). 

We wondered if this was just happening to us, that maybe something had gone wrong with our wiring. Earlier in the week, Ken called the town hall to ask if they knew what was going on. The woman he spoke with said that it's not just us, but the whole town. The electric company is doing something too technical to explain and it should be over soon.

All was quiet for a few days after that, but it the power cut out again this morning when I started typing this entry. It's hard to believe that this is happening to the whole town and nobody's talking about it. The least the electric company (or the mayor's office) could do would be to notify us that this was going on and what to expect. But no. Not a word. And there's nothing about it on the town's web site. The mayor is currently (pun intended) out of town on vacation, but when she gets back I want to ask her about the situation and when we might expect it to stop.