Taking A Wider View

Blessings Darlings!

This morning, when I finally got up (I closed last night, got home at midnight, then spent an hour on the phone with Verizon because cable TV is down), the Chubby Hubby informed me the outlet that all the florescent lights in his lab are plugged into was broken.  He had already tried re-setting the circuit breakers, which were in the garage, but that hadn't helped.  He'd 'fixed' the problem by adding an extension cord and using a different outlet.

Okay.

I go about my day.  That includes getting meat out to thaw for dinner.  The big freezer, along with a small dorm refrigerator, are in the garage.  Once in the garage, I see a puddle on the floor from the dorm fridge - it's not working. No power.  Big freezer has no power either.  This is not good. Big freezer is full of meat, including two legs of lamb that the Spawn found marked down the other day.

Husband and I look at the problem together. Not the circuit breakers. All plugged in. Oh - that little red light on the outlet the frig and freezer and plugged into - THAT's where the problem is!  Push button to reset that, all is well.  Not just for freezers, but for the house alarm system and the outlet in the lab.

THEN CH tells me that he'd seen the puddle on the floor when he fiddled with the circuit breakers before I'd gotten up, but didn't think to connect it to the electrical issue.  Or think at ALL about where a puddle would have come from in a garage.   

CH had a narrow focus.  And had 'fixed' his narrow problem, sort of. But this was a broader-based problem, and it took noticing the broader-based evidence to fix it.  And a bit of luck - had I not gone to the freezer for meat, we might have lost EVERYTHING we had in the freezer.  And I would have had one hell of a tantrum.

All's well ... that starts with LOTS of observations.

Frondly, Fern