Ah, Reddy Kilowatt, My Old Nemesis

A severe winter storm swept through the West Coast at the end of last week, splitting trees, loosening mudslides, and knocking out power to 2 million people between central California and Oregon. Unfortunately, I couldn't blog about it until now because my electricity's been out since 9 a.m. Friday.
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Now, there's a stretch of time after the power goes out that's kind of fun. You slip a flashlight into your pocket, light candles, break out the camping lantern, start a fire in the fireplace, dance to 78s on the antique hand-cranked phonograph, play "Clue." When the lights flicker back on everyone groans a disappointed "Awww!" because they were having a neat little adventure without them.
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This weekend I learned that "fun time" lasts about 12 hours. After 67 hours, it gets really old. You run out of "Little House on the Prairie" and Donner Party jokes on Day Two.
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Part of our back fence blew over. We lost much of the food in the fridge and freezer, which wasn't actually a lot. Some of it made for an excellent barbeque Saturday night. I don't usually barbeque in the rain, but this was a special occasion. Like well-prepared Boy and Girl Scouts, we took stock of our resources. What worked: the fireplace, gas water heater, gas stove top, laptop computers (but no wireless Internet in range). What didn't work: lights, heat, refrigerator, oven, Dance Dance Revolution, the computer with all my good stuff. Fortunately, we had sufficient firewood, blankets, sleeping bags, and cats to prevent hypothermia.
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Also fortunately, our children were home from college for winter break. They were delicious.
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It was both a blessing and a curse that our neighborhood was a little island of darkness surrounded by otherwise normal, fully electrified homes and businesses. All our usual supermarkets, restaurants, shopping centers and movie theaters worked fine. Sunday night my wife and I went to see a movie in which we had no interest just to sit somewhere warm and distracting for two hours ("The Waterhorse," which was not bad). That was the blessing part; the curse part was that because our outage affected a small number of people in the middle of a functioning civilization, we were a very low priority for repair work. At night, we could see the lights of homes around us--twinkling, mocking, bragging about all the electrons flowing through their wires--and fantasize about long extension cords that would deliver us sweet relief at last.
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Everything clicked on at 4 a.m. today, and all is nearly forgiven. The inside temperature of our house has risen 20 degrees. My wife is at the supermarket restocking our larder. And we have vowed to never take electricity for granted again, in a spirit of thankfulness and appreciation I expect to last at least another hour.
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