The Golden Age of Electricity And/Or Things That Ale Me

When Wendy, Julian and I arrived home last evening at 10:30 p.m. we found our house to be in the dark. Yup, we survived three days of freezing rain without losing power, then once the weather turned gorgeous..WHAM! No power.

Wendy went to bed with cold feet. Julian hunkered down in his bed. I actually enjoyed the power outage (finally some 'adventure' in my life). This morning, Wendy and Julian couldn't wait to get out of Dodge. I decided to ride out the storm, except there was no storm, just no power.

After the non-campers scampered to Fredericton, I decided to walk to the local country store on a fact finding mission. I found out very little about the power outage. The store had power, so what did they care? I bought a Sussex Ginger Ale only because I felt compelled to buy something since I entered the store on ulterior motives.

The power came back on around noon, some 22 hours after it had gone off (according to my sources). There were widespread power outages across New Brunswick during and after the freezing rain storms. All people were talking about socially was the weather and the loss of electricity. Here are some interesting (and shocking) facts that I discovered as a result of our collective electrical woes:

- the CEO of NB Power earns up to $324 999 per year.
- there are roughly 630 employees at NB Power who earn $100 000 per year or more.
- electricity first came to Saint John in 1880.
- 54 000 New Brunswickers were without power at the peak of this week's freezing rain storm.
- a small bottle of Sussex Golden Ginger Ale cost me $2.60 at our general store.

Jeeeeeeeee-suzzzzzzzz! Can you believe they charge $2.60 for a small bottle (591ml) of pop? I felt like a total tool for buying it. On the upside, I probably saved enough money by having my power out for 22 hours that I could pay for the pop.

Fact: a 591ml bottle of pop is approximately 13% of an Imperial gallon. This means that paying $2.60 for a bottle of pop is equal to paying $20 per gallon. For ginger ale!! My extensive research tells me that a bottle of pop like this costs the manufacturer about 25 cents to make and that includes the cost of the plastic bottle.

If there's one thing I've learned during this ice storm, it's that I can't afford to drink over-priced sugar water. Golden ginger ale or golden fleece? Really, I ask you, because I think I was fleeced royally.