{"id":2288,"date":"2013-04-04T17:21:47","date_gmt":"2013-04-05T01:21:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.desoren.com\/?p=2288"},"modified":"2026-04-15T12:27:01","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T20:27:01","slug":"easter-ice-camping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desoren.com\/?p=2288","title":{"rendered":"Easter Ice camping"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ng\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It was a wonderful Friday evening.<\/p>\n

After weeks of cleaning the old town house we were about to spend our first free weekend together in our new home, best of all it was Easter weekend and the 6th anniversary of our domestic partnership (10 years total this fall). The weather forecast could not have been better, super cold at night but 70\u2019s and nice during the days.<\/p>\n

Anthony stopped off at Fred Meyers and picked up eggs, Easter candy, a new basket for Jayme, 2 different egg dye packs and 2 special movies for the weekend, The Easter Bunny is coming to town and From the Earth to the Moon. Jayme has been into space lately and the whole DVD series was at Wal-Mart for 12 bucks, great box set for some early prep work for our fall visit to Cape Canaveral.<\/p>\n

Joshua picked up Jayme early from day care and the two of them arrived home and entered via the garage. They then headed right outside to work in the front yard clearing fallen branches and weeds from the area.<\/p>\n

Anthony pulled up in his car and made his way inside with the goodies and groceries via the front door. As he put his key in the lock he noticed that there was a little yellow door hanger. It read “Per your request, the gas has been shut off.”<\/b><\/p>\n

Now for years now we have impressed into Jayme that adults are supposed to behave like adults in moments of stress. That big boys do not yell. Big boys do not throw things. Big boys do not use bad words. But\u2026. when in the course of human events, it becomes necessary\u2026 sometimes, yes sometimes, adults not only can but will lose it.<\/p>\n

We had been working every night for a month and were emotionally drained, physically dead exhausted and to became suddenly confronted with the very real fact that the whole family now has to camp in a cursed house without heat and no hot water for the weekend (and possibly longer). It was just to much for us. Jayme cried, Anthony stormed and Joshua yelled. It was not a pretty picture.<\/p>\n

What was a pretty picture was how our family recovered and pulled together. A quick call to our “good friends” at a certain Northwest based gas company,\u00a0 reviled that their customer service center was closed and had been closed for a whole and complete minute. This billion dollar public utility apparently does not work weekends, because clearly no one needs services on the weekend.<\/p>\n

But they do have an emergency number, and this being an emergency we called it. We were a bit shocked to find that this Northwest based gas company,\u00a0 had maned their emergency phone line with Vogons<\/strong><\/a>. After speaking with the Vogon on the phone we learned that they had not just switched off the natural gas to the wrong house, as we first suspected. You see we had called them to do just that for our old home. We had asked for our names to be removed at our old house back in February<\/span> and switched over to our new home. What we found was:<\/p>\n