Local Man Borrows Battery, Insists He Could Have Built It

Four Devices, One Ladder

By afternoon I was up the ladder at the gutter with my phone nearly flat, the tablet holding my drawings, a pair of headphones, and Tamsin's laptop, which she had left with me for a software matter and which I held like a hot dish.

The bank has four ports and puts out 230W in total, so all four devices drew at once and none of them sulked. Nobody had to wait their turn on the one good outlet.

The screen on the front is 3.9 inches and shows the watts moving in real time. I stood on the ladder reading it like a gas gauge. Tamsin came by, looked at my cable arrangement, and said nothing, which from her is a medal.

The laptop went on the dedicated 100W port. It reached half charge before my coffee was cold. Tamsin said half is what that port promises for a compatible laptop, and that half is an honest number. I have decided to respect it.

I stood on the ladder reading it like a gas gauge.

Mags Requests Custody

Mags Delacroix-Burke met me at the mailbox cluster with a clipboard and the expression she wears when a bylaw is about to happen. She is flying to a convention of neighborhood associations and needed to charge a phone and a laptop on the way. The bank is 72Wh and 20000mAh, which fits airline carry-on rules, and she knew the number before I did.

She issued Memo 301, placing the unit in her temporary administrative custody. Doris said the Ledger recognizes borrowing but not custody. Mags said that was a gap in the Ledger.

The Caucus sent its support. Mags read out the Caucus's annual record, whose members hold that life with a cat is the highest form of human existence, and it listed the Long Recess in the Good Armchair, the Vigil Beside the Fruit Bowl and the Unbroken Sitting on the Warm Laundry Pile, which Doris pointed out were all naps. Mags said each one took sustained commitment. Admiral Biscuit, asleep on the Ledger, did not contest it.

The Question of the Witness Line

The custody notice needed a witness line, because Brenda had watched the whole exchange from under the porch at No. 2. We then spent forty minutes deciding whether the witness line should read "domesticated bear," "Domesticated Bear" or "Bear (Domesticated), of No. 2," because Doris said capital letters imply a rank and Mags said Brenda outranks the treasurer.

It was settled in lowercase, with a footnote. Brenda stayed under the porch and did not weigh in, which was widely taken as consent.

ORACLE, consulted on the return date, forecast that Mags would return from the convention in 2.64 days, by canoe. Mags thanked it. Doris said the Ledger does not accept decimals, and entered the due date as "soon."

Returned, Charged, Slightly Humbled

The bank came back in better order than the lane. Mags had used the companion app on the plane to turn down the output on one port, and she showed me how, with a joy she normally keeps for amendments.

I plugged it into the wall to refill it. On a single 100W port it goes from empty to 80% in 39 minutes. With the RAPID Pro desktop charger it takes only 19, but that is a separate piece, and Doris does not own one. I mention this because a man should know what he is borrowing and what he is not.

I returned it at six. Doris wrote "returned, charged, slightly humbled" in the Ledger and asked if I had anything to add. I said I could build that. She wrote that down too.