Dark.
August 14th, 2003
So I spent most of the morning cleaning because Mum was heading up here today. In the morning I went out into the garden and did some much needed weeding, and Chris mowed the lawn and whippersnipped the edges. Weener came over in the early afternoon to use the computer, and I read a book and checked TUS and puttered. It was really hot, and I had a fan going upstairs because we were masochists and didn't want to turn on the air conditioning. Chris coped by spending most of the day on the couch in the basement.
Around 3ish, Weener and I decided to play cribbage, and Chris left for a bikeride. We both used to play cribbage with Dad but hadn't played in a few years, so we were a little rusty. Around 4pm, the fan suddenly clicked off and I noticed the VCR clock was off as well. I went downstairs to see if a breaker had tripped and everything was still on, so I just figured the power was out for a bit.
I called Chris on the cellphone to let him know that the power was out, and then I tried to find a battery-powered radio to see if I could hear if there was anything going on in the city. Well, The Wolf was out, but I managed to get CBC in Toronto and heard about the extent of the outage. My next thought was to call Mum and see where she was on the highway and to tell her to take a certain way in, because if the lights were out, traffic was going to be a nightmare. One problem....I couldn't get through to her cellphone. I tried calling Chris as well, and just got a fast busy signal after a couple of rings. Mum's wouldn't even ring, just dead air and then a fast busy.
She finally arrived around 6pm, and asked what had happened. I asked her if she had been listening to her radio and she said no, because around 4pm she couldn't get a station (in a stretch of highway that we normally have problems holding a station even sans power outages) so she had put in a CD. We got her cat into the house and the rest of the car unloaded, and tried to decide what was for supper!
We ended up barbecuing chicken sausage from the freezer and making a big salad. After supper we started to play Trivial Pursuit until it got dark. Then we lit candles and the oil lamp. Boy, you sure don't appreciate the luxury of bright, clear white light when it's gone. We could barely read the questions and it was almost impossible to tell apart the pie colours (all clear plastic of various colours that in a strong yellow light turn indistinguishable). We almost knocked the candles over a couple of times, and once the lamp chimney almost went for a ride.
We were lucky though, because after a few flickers and cuts, our power came back at around 9pm. We looked outside, but it was only our street! The rest of the city was still black. We called Chris's parents in the North End and told them we had power and they didn't believe us because theirs was still off. I think a few transformers blew because we heard some big bangs, and firetruck sirens driving back and forth for a while.
We finally went to bed and I know the power went off and on a few times because the fan beside my head kept turning off or on and waking me up.
It was a little adventure.
Books I have Read Lately:
- Black Projects, White Knights by Kage Baker. I love this universe. I love The Company. I want to live there. This is a book of short stories with some of the characters from Kage Baker's Company Novels. It also has 4 intriguing stories about Alec Checkerfield and when I read the second one I shrieked, drummed my heels on the floor and waved my hands excitedly in the air like a little girl and this escalated with each Alec story until I was foaming at the mouth desperate for another Company novel. Write Faster! Love!
(All links go through Amazon.ca because of the affiliate program with The Usual Suspects. I spend so much time on there, that this is the least I can do.)