Dishes in the Dark

When I saw clouds rising outside the call center tonight, I was a little concerned. Our dialer is a little twitchy and doesn't always respond well to severe weather. Worse than that, the power grid around the building seems particularly susceptible to outages. So when the winds started to howl, the rain started to fall, the lightning started to flash, and the TV in the break room started screeching with a Severe Thunderstorm Alert, my colleagues and I started preparing for the worst.

As it turned out, we had only minimal problems. There was a power flicker that knocked out several of the interviewing stations, resulting in lost calls that the dialer immediately tried to call back. That caused problems for about fifteen minutes. It also knocked out two of the computers in the supervisors' office—the two that Vince and I were using on a project for the owner of the company, as it turned out. But we'd been careful about saving out data and lost less than a sentence. For the curious, the Second Rule of Computers is as follows: Save early and save often.

We finally got the project done around 8:45, and I headed home. On the drive along 2100 South, I began to notice areas without electricity. When I reached the stoplight nearest our house, I discovered that our entire neighborhood was one such area. Not only was the stoplight itself out, but there was no power on any of the four adjacent corners.

So I drove the rest of the way home, entered the apartment, and found one of our flashlights. Then I set about doing something about the darkness. I lit a three-wick candle in the kitchen, a jarred candle in the bathroom, and a small portable oil lamp in the living room. Between the candles and the lamp and the trusty flashlight, the place is dark but navigable.

Nancy's at work tonight. She called me on the way home, before I realized we had no power at home. She offered to bring home food from work, and I told her I thought that'd be a good idea. She had to leave mid-conversation to help a customer but promised to call back. When she did, I informed her or our predicament. Not a lot she could do about it, but at least she knew.

Even with the extra time I spent at the call center, I was still looking at more than an hour and a half before she got home. What to do? What was even possible without electricity? Isn't it amazing how much of our lives revolves around electrical power? Well, we still had hot and cold water, and there was a moderate stack of dishes waiting to be washed. So I moved the candle a little closer to the sink, got out this trusty laptop, turned on Winamp and set it to play everything at random, and dived in. It took about 20 minutes to do the dishes, but I had tunes, so it went by pretty quickly.

I've dealt with power outages before. My freshman year in high school, for example, we had a blizzard that kept my brother and me out of school for our birthdays. (Regular readers may recall that my birthday is in the latter half of May. That's Colorado for you.) The snow also knocked out power to our house.

For a week.

No big deal, though. We had a wood-burning stove for heat—our only source of heat, actually. That's right, I grew up in a house without a furnace or central heating. Well, that's not entirely true; the stove was in the living room, which opened into every other room of the house except the bathroom. So that was pretty central. Anyway, the loss of power didn't inconvenience us too badly. The local farmers made sure the roads were cleared. They need them clear to do their jobs, after all, and tractors and frontloaders are perfect for pushing snow out of the way. We had plenty of food, as we always did growing up. Much of it was the fruits and vegetables we spent every summer growing and canning. As far as perishable goods, well, we had a convenient 5-foot snowdrift along the side of the house that we stuck food into. That kept it plenty cold. We cooked meals on the wood-burning stove, which we often did anyway. And our phone still worked.

The only real inconvenience was the lack of hot water. Sure, we had plenty for dishes and cooking and such, thanks to the wood-burning stove. We even had enough for a quick sponge bath now and then. But after a few days of this, we were all ready for a good, hot shower. Luckily, our friends Geoff and Mark (or more properly, their parents) invited us over for dinner and showers with all the hot water we wanted at the end of the week. It was only a day or two later we got the power back on.

All of this taught me that a blackout didn't necessarily have to be a catastrophe. Life went on pretty much as usual. We even had birthday cake—cheesecake, that is. Mom had all the ingredients on hand, so she made a blueberry cheesecake for me and cherry cheesecake for my brother. We were just fine with that. Actually, blueberry cheesecake is still my birthday cake of choice.

Now, I'm not nearly as well-prepared as my parents were, not by a long way. But if push came to shove, we've probably got food and supplies for at least a week or two. We have candles and flashlights and batteries to last us quite a while. And I've got this nifty laptop to help keep me entertained—at least until Nancy gets home.

So here I sit at the kitchen table, typing by the light of the big three-wick candle and a USB powered reading light I found at Big Lots for $4. I can hear the rain starting to pick up again outside, though it seems to be a comparatively gentle rain, not like the tree-denting downpour we had earlier. And I feel good about things. I like the rain. Maybe I'll turn off the computer and just listen to the rain for a while.

Good night, loyal readers. I hope you're all getting the weather you need and want.

10:48 p.m., Tuesday night, 4 September 2007