Darkness

Wednesday night, I was finally gonna take a friend's advice and check out the new show Pushing Daisies. At the time of my conversation with my friend, a storm was rolling into town and he just got a call from his wife that the electricity was out. So, I offered to tape it for him.

Just before the show was to start, the wind outside started blowing so hard that it was whipping the trees in front of my building against the windows. I opened the blinds to watch the trees outside, and after about ten seconds I realized that was a stupid thing to do. The window didn't break, but I would've felt really dumb if it had with me standing with my face ten inches from the glass.

So, I sat down to watch the show. It was damn good, for the first ten minutes. That's when the power went out. I fumbled around in the closet by the light of my cell phone screen, trying to find the flashlight. For the first hour without power, I succumbed to boredom and watched the cat chase the light around the floor.

One of my neighbors was outside my window. We chatted for a bit, with him letting me know that apparently our building was on the edge of the electrical grid. People across the street had power, but we didn't. He also informed me of an incident across the river at Octoberfest. The strong winds had blown down a couple of the huge tents, and several people got injured. I remember commenting, "those poor bastards."

After my neighbor went back inside, I had more boredom time with the flashlight pretending to be a CSI and my apartment was a crime scene. That lasted a few minutes before becoming really, really depressing. If my apartment was ever to be a crime scene, professional investigators would have a field day trying to figure out what happened. So, I went down to Borders for a bit and got caught up on my magazines.

I got back home and the power was still out. So, I got into bed and read a book to the warm glow of mini Mag-lite. The book: Children of Men. In retrospect, maybe I should've picked something a little happier. Reading about a bleak future where the human race is doomed, while you're laying in the dark, made for some really fucked-up dreams.

Thursday morning, I got to talking to my boss about what happened at Octoberfest. As it turns out, he was one of the poor bastards that got injured. It was just a bump on the head and a small gash on his arm, but still... However, it was interesting to hear him tell the story. He made the words "And I pushed my wife to the ground and told her to stay down" and make it sound so heroic.

So, my electricity was back on in the morning, and fortunately all of the fresh groceries in the fridge survived. The funny thing is, Wednesday night was the night I was gonna finally do all the dishes and finish cleaning up after my party last Saturday. Kinda hard to do in the dark. Thursday night, I was just too damn tired, and tonight, I'm just too lazy.

Oh, well, there's always tomorrow.