It happened early Saturday evening in the middle of the Fox40 telecast of the Oakland A's-San Francisco Giants MLB game.
An electrical power outage in my area of Stockton.
We were warned -- although most of us ignore those emails from PG&E -- of the strong possibility of rotating power outages due to the extreme hot weather during most of this week.
The California Independent System Operator, which oversees the state's electric grid, has the task of balancing energy demand based on the available resources such as power plants along with the large solar arrays and wind farms.
According to PG&E, these rotating outages become necessary when the CAISO anticipates that the state won't have enough power in reserves given the customer demand forecast.
CAISO, during such emergencies, can order utility companies such as PG&E to immediately turn off a certain amount of service in order to prevent larger outages on the grid.
Of course, PG&E asked us to do our part by adjusting the air conditioning thermostat to 78 degrees or reducing A/C use during the afternoon (check, my A/C has yet to be turned on this year).
Opt for using a fan and drawing drapes and window covering (check, I just drew the drapes). I sleep with the ceiling fan on and both windows open in hopes of catching a breeze. In fact, I had just rearranged the room while placing my bed directly underneath the ceiling fan about an hour before this weekend's power outage.
Earlier in the day, I was on the phone, talking to my friend Sam, who mentioned the possibility of the PG&E outages. He had his power generator ready just in case of emergencies like this.
One thing that I took from our talks was to make sure to charge up my cell phone and the accessory battery pack.
When the power went out my phone was at least 70 percent charged.
I immediately checked with my neighbors, in particular, the elderly ones to let them know about the situation.
That's what good neighbors do, right?
We were fortunate that the power was only out for about 90 minutes.
I was outside when I heard the TV on, unaware that the Giants had another sizable ninth-inning lead over the Bay Area rival A's.
Oakland rallied back the previous night with a come-from-behind win keyed by Stephen Piscotty's grand slam.
This time Mark Canha tripped up SF with his three-run blast in the ninth.
Too bad, as an A's fan, I was pretty much powerless and left in the dark to see the ninth-inning sparks.
All told, I'm glad to have the return of pro sports as a diversion during these interesting times.
