Jack and Gail and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day...

The last 24 hours have put me in mind of the title of a children's book by Judith Viorst,
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day so, with apologies, I am borrowing her title.

Yesterday, our second day here in Wilmington, NC started out as a good day.

I went to spend some time at Becca's and had a nice visit with her and the kids. Played Connect Four with Jackson, and Katie made me a beautiful picture that said, "I Love You" - now proudly displayed on my wall.

Later on, I accompanied Jack to a much needed doctor's appointment to see about getting his back pain managed. He got some new meds and a radiology appointment as well as an appointment with a pain management doc in a few days.

We were hungry when we left the doctor's office and headed over to El Cerro Grande for Mexican, the first decent Mexican food we've had in three months. Then home to relax and watch NCIS.

I was cruising online for a while before the show started then, about 7:45, fifteen minutes before NCIS, the lights dimmed...a lot. It was a strong brown-out and quickly became a power failure. I unplugged our laptops and went to look for Jack, who was outside emptying tanks. It was then that I saw smoke at our bedroom door and smelled something burning; I yelled for Jack, which got him in the house (fifth wheel) quickly. We traced the smoke to the bedroom TV and unplugged it. I then noticed a burning smell coming from the living room, ran to that TV and saw smoke. We got that TV unplugged and turned to the convection/microwave oven. Jack opened the door and the turntable was going around...kind of freaky. We quickly unplugged it. Somewhere in all this, I noticed all the lights flashing on my washer/dryer. I  hit the off button and they stopped.

We needed help! I got on the computer and posted a HELP! on several RV pages I frequent. We got a lot of opinions and advice and Jack checked our power cord for a fried plug (it was okay) and did a lot of flipping circuit breakers. We ultimately ended up unplugging the RV from shore power. A Facebook friend, who is an RV Tech, found a local number for us to call. We left a message and got a call back from the tech. He said to leave the RV unplugged and he would be out first thing in the morning. We discussed going to a hotel, but it's hard to find a room that is pet friendly, so we opted to stay in the dark trailer. We had a little power from the 12 volt battery, but it wasn't going to last long enough to run the furnace through the night...and the temps were going down into the thirties.  It was a long and very cold night. The indoor temp in the morning was fifty-four and I turned on the furnace for a bit to try and warm things up.

The RV Tech showed up as promised. After much inspecting, following wires, measuring amps, and flipping breakers, it was decided that the 50 amp plug on the power pole was recessed and didn't maintain a good connection, causing an interruption of power which caused something referred to as "open neutral"...and it is an appliance killer. Got power restored to the RV, got the campground staff to look at repairing the pole and hooked up our Progressive Industries EMS Surge Protector which, ironically, had just been delivered Tuesday. Had we taken the time to connect it immediately, it might have prevented the damage...two fried flat screen TVs, a dead convection/microwave a dead washer/dryer combo, and a dead DVD player. The power strip that our laptops were plugged into died saving our laptops.

I spent the day talking with Jason, our insurance adjuster; he had a field rep come take pictures and document model numbers and will get back to me tomorrow with estimates for replacing our damaged items. We shall see how that goes.

So, no TV, no microwave, and no washer/dryer for who knows how long but, at least we have lights and heat!

Oh...and I had to cancel my hair appointment! (lol)