Okay, so maybe it doesn't hold a candle to the Great Northeast Blackout of Ought-Three, but we lost power somewhere around five o'clock last evening during the hurricane force gusts of wind and driving rain, and didn't get it back until tonight around eight-thirty or so.
The weird thing is, we didn't lose all of our power. The two bedrooms and bathroom at the end of the hall were out. The living room and most of the kitchen were out. But the kids' bedroom, the hall light, the big bathroom and the one outlet in the kitchen toward the center of the house— they were all on.
Bizarrely enough, we were told that this wasn't a circuit breaker thing. It was somehow linked straight to the source. That'd be at our transformer, I suppose, or perhaps some sort of distrubution box near the street wiring. Who knows.
So anyway, we took advantage of the partial power to run a 25-foot extension cord from the kids' room to the power strip that serves the home theatre system in the living room. I set up my cellphone and my GBA charging on a power strip installed in the bathroom, and we all sat down to enjoy Clockstoppers, which was a pretty fun flick, all in all.
Sleep was a toughie. The street lights were out in out apartment complex, so in my paranoia (not entirely unwarranted— we don't live in the best of neighborhoods) I attemped to sleep with a D-cell MagLite by my side. That wasn't the problem, though. We had no AC, and though I set up a fan in the hallway with yet another extension cord from the lavatory, the open windows didn't supply so much a cooling breeze as a sweltering mix of heat and humidity. Eventually I moved to the futon in the living room, and managed to find a small amount of rest there, even though the cat took advantage of my lower roost to sleep on my head.
Today, not much changed. I went out before work to grab a cheap foam cooler, some ice and some Gatorade™, so the family wouldn't dry up and wither away while I was in Takoma Park with blissfully operational power and AC. At about seven-thirty, Reb called to let me know that the power had completely gone out, but then about an hour later, everything came back on, as is proper. I assume they must have had to shut down what little was operational to reset the system... or something. I dunno. Everything I know about power grids, I learned from Jurassic Park.
So here we are, back to the present, and I'm off to bed. A cool, comfy bed with an alarm clock to wake me. Ahhhhh...