No Electricity for 24 hours

So I forget how spoiled we are in today's culture until a day like last weekend when I came home to no electricity.

I came home from being at the movies in Chinatown in downtown DC, and tried to go to the market by my house but it was closed. Didn't think anything of it. Came home walked in the door and went to put my left overs from lunch in the fridge when I thought it was curious that the light in the fridge was out. The all of a sudden it occurred to me... I went over and flicked the kitchen light switch...ahhh, the power was out.

I had no idea it had stormed so bad in the few hours I was in the movie to collapse power lines, uproot trees and put something like 600,000 homes without electricity. The City of DC was fine, it was the suburbs of MD right outside DC that were screwed...right where I live.

Of course I was the only one home, I figured the electricity would be on soon so I went and did some house chores and twiddled around. The power had been out for two hours when I decided to get on my computer to realize that the Internet runs off electricity. Then I went to do laundry and realized that the washer runs on electricity. Went to heat up left overs until I realized that the microwave runs on electricity. See a trend?

Then I got to thinking, since it was now getting dark out, I need candles, lighter, flashlight... oh what about an alarm clock for work in the morning and then started to panic, is my cell phone charged enough to last all night?? It was charged, oh good.

I hung out and read and did little things around the house until dark, then I wrote parent notes for my kids with a flashlight and decided to read some more. Thank goodness for ipod and such, for I realized mine was recently charged and I had tv shows downloaded that I hadn't seen yet.

The air conditioning was wafting away fast, it got hot on the third floor....like really hot! I was sweating just being on the third floor. Decided to go to the basement and sleep in the recliner, but that was terribly uncomfortable. Then I moved to the floor in the basement, but all I could think of was "when was the last time this floor was vacuumed?" and decided to go try and sleep on the second floor on the leather couch. Leather couch + heat = no sleep. Then I decided even though it was hot at least I would be comfortable and went back up to the third floor to sleep in the heat, and I did at last. At like 2am.

The next morning I awoke to my cell phone alarm and still no electricity. For the first time I was happy no roommates were home because I was able to leave my windowless bathroom door open while I showered in the dark. I got ready fast because I had no blow dryer or straightener or radio or any of those other morning comforts.

Luckily, by the time I got home that night I had electricity. I was ready to kiss the ground that electricity walked on and came to the conclusion that I had no idea how many things ran on electricity that I love!