powerless

Friday had dawned sunny, sticky and humid. I had the day off, did some shopping, met a former colleague for lunch, bought some shoes, sat in traffic in the huge construction-y mess that is now Golf Rd by Old Orchard Center. Around 3:30 it started getting dark and stormy looking. I didn't mind, I like a good rain storm, so I was contentedly watching Jeopardy in dark coolness. 4:00 it's getting darker and darker. Like scary dark. I have a sudden realization that I'd left a pair of shoes outside to dry in the sunshine after I'd stepped in a massive puddle earlier in the week, and that if the dark sky opened up they'd be soaked once again. Sprinted outside to grab the shoes. The wind had picked up, so once back inside, I went straight to the tv to see what was up. Just as I was thinking "Wouldn't it suck to have your power go out and have no air conditioning on such a hot sticky day" we heard a loud explosive sound.

And the power went out.

Frantic calls to ComEd ensued, as the wind whipped and the thunder clapped and the rain poured. I figured out how to use my iPod radio (yay!) to try and find a weather report. Without tv or any other radio, how were we supposed to know when to take cover? There could be a tornado under my nose, for all I knew, and no way to know if I should grab the cats and go to the basement.

The storm subsided, but we were still in darkness. You know how you hear on the news about areas that lose power in big storms and the newscasters say something like "power won't be restored to these areas for several days" and you think (from the comfort of your brightly lit and air conditioned home) "Sucks to be them!!" Well, now we were them. It was our whole block.

It's so strange, isn't it, the things you notice when something like this happens. Each time I went into the bathroom, I automatically flipped the lightswitch before I realized oh, yeah, lights are out. You can't read or watch tv (unless you use a flashlight or candle light) you can't go online (well, I couldn't anyway, because I don't have wireless on my laptop). We couldn't open our refridgerator. We ordered out, ate by flashlight and kept a look out for the ComEd guys. They did come, actually pretty quickly. But it was the same thing each time. They'd park, look at the pole, get out a big rod, do something, get in the truck and go away. Late Friday evening, they came back, put a guy in a cherry picker and had him up there, fussing with wires. Then it started raining and storming again, and they went away. Only thing to do was go to sleep, and even that was weird. I do this thing in the morning where I turn over and pick up the alarm clock so I can see what time it is. I did that Saturday morning and was greeted with darkness. I had hoped that I would wake up and everything would magically be restored, but alas.

More frantic calls to ComEd for status updates, and the message was different every single time I called. No news. No estimates on restoration times. At one point I spoke to a person and she said that the estimate was "several days" without power. Eventually we decided to get a generator to save the contents of the fridge (my cheese curds!) and freezer. No sooner had we gotten the thing hooked up and running when the ComEd guys showed up again. They thought everything was fixed (uh, no, guys, sorry) and had to see what was up. We went out to pick up some lunch and when we were back --- the lights were on! The clocks were flashing!! I've never been so happy to turn on a light in my entire life.