Nothing Like A Blackout...

...to make you feel helpless sometimes. I like to think I'm not one to be a slave to the modern conveniences America 2008 has to offer but when there's a blackout life can suck.

I got home from watching the movie "Milk" and doing my Internets thing when the lights went out. I thought it was just my room, but it was dark in the whole house. I walked out to the street and it was dark. I walked downtown and up to route 36 noting that the whole town was dark, save some emergency lights. I walked to the waterfront to see that New York was aglow but any town near me on either side of Atlantic Highlands was dark. I called my parents to see if they were experiencing a blackout. My dad was on the road but had not confronted it. My mother didn't have the power out in their house. My dad then let me know that the whole county of Monmouth was dark.

Shit! This may take awhile.

Luckily the weather was nice, and therefore not the cause of the blackout. when I lived in the suburbs of Seattle I had a far worse time of it because our blackout lasted 5 days in late December between Christmas and New Years. The cause of the blackout was a very rare but beautiful Ice Storm that rolled in the area. It paralyzed the area because the Seattle area almost never gets snow. Now, everything was electric including the stove. The heat was provided by an old kerosene heater from my girlfriends father's garage. She stayed at her parent's place whereas I stubbornly waited it out hoping to catch the moment the power came on and that I could use my new computer.

I went mad, Seattle's sun goes down very early in the winter, only Alaska gets dark earlier. I had to wake up to a wind up alarm. I had to cook food outdoors with the grill, and I diligently went to the worst job I ever had. Still, the power didn't come back on. Most of my neighbors had their power come back on. And the power substation down the block mocked me with its close proximity to my house and my lack of electricity. To add insult to injury this was the coldest weather I had experienced in my 14 years in Seattle.

Finally the power came back on, I used my computer, said hi to my girlfriend and went back to my terrible job.

The one I had today, not nearly as bad.