Sounds like he's getting ready for a housing project. 
Nah, probably not.
There's not enough people around here to fill even a tiny housing project.
So this is all brand-spanking-new electricity flowing through the wires into here; I was really impressed that they got all that work done in two hours, when it was supposed to be seven hours.
But of course, these aren't utility men from blue states and blue cities.
You know, while the power was out, I thought of something.
It might sound silly, but it
seems to me electricity isn't what electricity used to be; it's diluted or something, weaker.
I came along about the time three-prong outlets were coming into use; much of my very early childhood is memories of two-prong outlets and two-prong plugs, and the plugs were usually half-globes, round.
When we moved to the Sandhills when I was 10 years old, into a brand-new house, everything was three-pronged.
Earlier than that, though, alongside the Platte River, we had lived in a great big huge house built circa 1910, and those outlets all had two prongs.
Anyway, some years after college, I decided to put up a Christmas tree, and since I had nothing, I went out and got some strings of Christmas-tree lights. The strings had these really stupid plugs with really stupid fuses in them.....and an outlet at each end into which one could plug the next string of lights.
I hadn't attached but one single solitary string (7 lights, for a total of 14) before the thing burned out.
These were NOT products of the socialist paradise of China; these were made in Bayonne, New Jersey.
Now, when I was a toddler in that great big two-pronged house, we always had enormous Christmas trees, and hundreds of lights (strings of Christmas-tree lights at the time came in 21, not 7), in which case surely 10 or 12 strings were plugged into each other. I don't recall the lights ever burning out.
In fact, I do recall that at the end string, with an outlet still available for use, one could plug in the electric train, the stereo, the vacuum cleaner, all the floor lamps, the electric heater, the spare refrigerator, &c., &c., &c., and nothing would happen. The electricity flowed freely and enthusiastically.
Nowadays, plug two 7-light strings of Christmas-tree lights together, and watch the thing burn out.
Also, I have noticed that when one gets shocked nowadays, it's not nearly with the force that one used to get; in fact, it's barely a tingle.
So I'm thinking, not seriously but halfway seriously, that 100 watts today is the equivalent of 15 watts in 1970.
