crawlspace cables, and slimline breakers

First time posting and certainly not the last. This site has already been informative while looking at the possible problem to my house lights slightly blinking for the last month only to have no power this morning. Then, after 10 minutes, there was power, then stopped again, then regained, but not to the kitchen outlets that include the fridge and microwave. Let me go back a step. My brother and i bought this house this past May, and one thing we did was grounded almost all of the outlets. The casing for each outlet was an older version, where as we could not just screw a pigtail to the side in a predrilled screwhole. Rather we loosened up a screw on the back of the case that may be just into the wall or something and pigtailed it that way. We did this for about 12 outlets, however did not do the one for the fridge or microwave, yet (we did all the others as we painted the rooms, etc, and worked on them.) Everything has been good since, until about a month ago. Lights would sometimes dim or flicker for little reason. But i have noticed that the flickering lights did occur sometimes when i wa burnign a CD on the computer. Ok, back to this morning. Woke up with no power in most of the house. Checked the fuse box, which has a circuit breaker board and a Fuse box connected. All the fuses were fine, not broken and had solid contact. Circuit breakers were all good, we even pushed them on and off just to make sure. None of that worked. After 10 minutes of messing with that thinking it was the problem, partial power came back on in the form of some light switches and some outlets. The kitchen outlets remain out however. I believe these run on teh 20 amp fuse downstairs. I have done a lot of reading and searches on this site for possible causes. Seems that there is a possibility of loose wiring somewhere or possibility of a bad switch. My brother will be going home today to check the oulet for which the computer is plugged into right now and make sure the wiring is snug, then checking the rest of them. Then i guess we would be looking at some switches, (there happens to be a dimmer switch in the dining room too if that means anything). I am a little confused how all the outlets seem to be alright except the kitchen ones. is it possible that what my initial thought is true? A bad outlet wiring or switch that piggy backs or whatever the term is to the kitchen? Or is it possible the fuse box has gone bad? Just wondering some thoughts out there. let me know if you need more detail, i will find out what may have initially been turned on in the morning to cause the intial outage. Kroc0005

I'm hoping someone will know what's wrong right off the bat... I've wired the a 4-way light circuit and powered it up, but it's not working properly. Instead of the 4-way switch turning the light on and off, it basically turns the circuit on and off (i.e. if the 4-way switch is in the up position, it allows the other two 3-way switches to work properly, but if the 4-way switch is in the down position, none of the switches work at all). I'm thinking that I have the wiring crossed somewhere, most likely at the 4-way switch. If it matters, the circuit runs like this: power in->----light->-----3-way switch->---4-way switch->---3-way switch Thanks in advance for the help... Brian