Woke up this morning to the joys of a work crew doing horizontal drilling right in front of my house. The entire rig is parked so that the front bumper just sticks right over the left edge of my driveway, and completely covers my mailbox. I sure hope I don’t get any important mail today.

I know why this is happening. Duke Energy, who now own the service area once owned by Progress Energy, is in the process of adding to, and updating, the power infrastructure in my neighborhood. This entire subdivision’s founding stretches back to the 1960s. My house was built in 1985, in section 9, the year we had it built and moved into it.

All the neighborhood electrical is underground, which is nice. What wasn’t so nice is that Progress Energy hardly performed any infrastructure upkeep to speak of with this entire area the whole time we’ve lived here. You don’t know how frustrating it is to have power go out over the least little thing, mostly up and down the street we live on.

To see Duke Energy come in and actually do Real Work in the area is heartening. But why is it that the crews have to come park right in front of my house to do it? This isn’t the first time I’ve hosted construction crews. Earlier this year when Orange County replaced sections of the sidewalk, those crews parked in the same general location with the same effect.

I’m curious to see if they will run new lines from the in-ground transformer two houses down, and if they do, how they’ll do it and what kind of interruption we can expect. And to think I’d have missed all of this if I were still working. Ah, the added joys of retirement.