jackshoegazer | (no subject)

(no subject)

Yesterday's thunderstorm knocked out our electricity at about 6pm and it didn't come back on until a little after 1am. My God, what did we all do before electricity. No movies, no internet, no LIGHT. As the evening wore on, Jacquelyn and I found ourselves moving toward the west end of the apartment, following the setting sun. I have a whole new respect for people in ye olde dayes who read by candlelight because that shit is hard. I must have fallen asleep pretty early because I woke up at 9:30pm and officially went to bed.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

When my brothers and I were younger, we often looked forward to the electricity going out- it was then that we had to resort to the same things that kept us entertained when we went camping. Namely, driving our father up the wall. :)

Reading by the light of a kerosene lamp is easier.

I never watched TV when I was a kid anyway, so it didn't matter. We'd go out and play in the rain.

We always played board games when the electricity went out, and I remember looking forward to it too. Now I'd probably just go stir crazy...

Unfortunately there wasn't enough light for boardgames last night :( Going to bed waaaay early was awesome though.

Reading my candlelight is romantic. Then you go blind for doing it too much. it probably gives you hairy palms as well.

Hairy palms are *very* romantic ;)

I used to love power outages when I was a little kid. Now they drive me batty. I've been known to grab my laptop, hop in the car, and drive until I find somewhere with electricity to set up shop in.

Same here. I looked forward to tornadoes and thunderstorms so much. Still do, actually. I love watching them roll in, watching my neighbors freak out. I like being the calm in the storm.

It's just been so long that I was caught off-guard and I'm so out of practice dealing with no electricity. Jacquelyn and I almost called a cab to go to the movies but nothing good was playing :P

Nothing good? Yo, what about the new Eddie Murphy flick? I think he'll get an Oscar nod for that performance. . .

My power goes out at least once every two weeks. In fact, it's been like that since I was a kid. There's this pole two blocks up from the house and for some reason, people insist on hitting it with their cars. It's worse in the summer because you get all the drunken idiots returning from the bars. But I love it anyway. It's peaceful when the lights go out.

As kids we'd light our hurricane lamps and make tents in the living room out of chairs and blankets. We'd pretend we were camping.

I lived in this one particular house that was prone to have car accidents near it. Once, a drunk guy stole his sister's car, went on a high-speed chase and crashed the car into my neighbor's porch.

Another time, four guys flipped their SUV in front of my house. We ran outside after we heard the noise and they were all climbing out of the vehicle. I started to dial 911, thinking someone was surely hurt, but one of the guys pointed at me and yelled, "Don't say nothing to nobody" before he ran off. The police fished case after case of beer out of the back of the SUV. They caught the guys about two blocks away.

These are just the best two. There were a couple dozen other events of similar magnitide :P

Like other commenters, I used to look forward to power failures - or I would re-create them as best I could, so I could play Little House on the Prairie (which pretty much amounted to sitting in my room in a skirt, drawing and playing with dolls until it got dark and I got bored.)

Now, I worry about food going bad, have a long string of activity ideas and then realize they require power, and finally we settle on wine and Scrabble.

Ah, it was getting too dark for Scrabble. Actually it was a bit too dark for just about anything. Because of the flooding, we are besieged by mosquitoes so even going outside wasn't a pleasant option.

Seriously, going to bed early was the best.

Couple years back, the power went out in my neighborhood for FOUR days. FOUR. It was like the Soviet Union, or even North Korea. On the third day, an Xcel truck drove up the street and people ran out of their houses (myself included) yelling up at the driver to see when the hell they were going to give us power back. The last day, someone had a baseball bat.

It may or may not have been me.

However, there was a stretch of a month after that where I had no light bulbs. Too lazy to go to the store, I guess. I read for a month by candlelight.

Makes you wonder what the apocalypse would be like.

(Once, I didn't pay my light bill and it was turned off. It was the earliest I ever went to bed.)

_{Two Christmases ago, we had a hurricane. And since Washington is mostly forest, all the downed 30 foot plus trees knocked out power for over a week for us, and several more in others. I really learned a lot during that...}

I've been without power for a couple of days, but never a week. I even used to do primitive camping where there was no technology post-1840 allowed. It was always quite nice :)

In the end, I enjoy doing stuff by candlelight when the power goes out. But whenever it first goes out and, after that first 5-10 minutes when you slowly realize it's not coming back on, I can get so agitated and anxious that I have to crawl into bed to avoid either having a panic attack or calling the power company and threatening violence. It's not as bad anymore, but that's only because power outages in the desert are a good excuse to go outside or drive somewhere. But back East in the winter climate that you're in? Hah!

Edit: Oh yeah, it's *July*. Here *and* in Madison. Still though, thunderstorms aren't the best time for taking a walk or drive either. ;)

Edited 2008-07-12 20:15 (UTC)

My grandparents told me a story about an ice storm they went through where they didn't have electricity for a few weeks. They told me stories of wood fires and metling ice for water. I suppose if I remembered that in the long view, this whole electricity thing is pretty new-fangled and I'm pretty lucky.

When I was a kid we did "rendesvous" or primitive camping where everything was pre-1840. The clothes, technoiogy, etc.. everything had to be before 1840. It was pretty awesome. We lived in tents and teepees, wore breeches, fired muskets and threw tomohawks and knives, cut firewood, carved wood, told stories by campfire. I kind of miss that. I wonder how many people do that now but LJ about it :P

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only