On Thursday. Thanks to some powerful storms, possibly including a tornado and a microburst in some areas (but not mine), there wasn’t any electricity to get a Whensday post ready for Wednesday. And I discovered something. I am addicted to electricity. Yes, I confess. Life is kind of meh without the power to make things go vrooom, and make the electronic pilot light work on the water heater so there’s hot water to at least take a shower or wash the dishes. Or run the washing machine. I really like having those things.
But sometimes the power goes out, so you wash the dishes in cold water. Or you have to try to light your stove with matches so you can at least try to boil some water for coffee. And then you have to stand there for 10 minutes pouring water through the little funnel you’ve rigged up to make coffee. Only you can’t use cream because that would mean opening the fridge and you can’t do that because then whatever cold air is left in there will escape. So you have to use the yucky dry powdered cream that you keep on hand for emergencies, and this counts as one.
Actually, this is the longest I think I’ve ever been without power. Not counting the occasional camp out. So that’s a pretty good record, I think. I know the power company has been working hard to get power restored here, and I also found out that we were among the early groups to have their power turned back on. We got lucky! Praise the Lord we didn’t lose anything in the fridge either! I expected to have a bin full of water under the ice maker, but no, it was wonderfully full of ice, after 17 hours without power. Is that awesome or what?
So, the power being out reminded me of something that happened to me several years ago.
I was doing my regular grocery shopping and had only been racing through the aisles for about 15 minutes, when suddenly, the power went out in the store. It was a big store so it got pretty dark near the back, since the windows were all in front. I heard a couple of women scream, like they do on TV when they see a mouse or something. I thought that was kind of funny for some reason. But while I was standing there waiting for my eyes to adjust – because I didn’t want to chance crashing into the shelves in the dark – I noticed several glowing vertical lines start to appear. Turned out the grocery carts had glow in the dark bumpers on the outside corners and they’d kicked in when the lights went out. Then I started hearing people exclaiming, “Oh wow! Would you look at that! The carts glow in the dark!” It was pretty cool, I have to say. 
The poor cashiers were lost without their registers. They couldn’t open them since there wasn’t any power, people couldn’t check out without the power to work the scanners, or scan their cards, everyone got stuck just waiting for the electricity to come back on. Which it did after about 15 or 20 minutes, so it was sort of a little adventure.
Do you have any “powerless” adventures?
The "Ness" in DarcNess ;) 
During the big blackout of 2003 (the one that knocked out whole states and a large chunk of Canada’s population), I had some fun times.
The blackout hit in the afternoon.
The morning prior, my water heater broke down.
Although my power was back on before I woke up the next morning, the problems the blackout caused made the utility companies very busy. They couldn’t come and fix my water heater for a week.
Cold showers for a week.
I ended up taking the huge soup pot and heating water on the stove so as to have a hot water sponge bath each morning to clean myself.
Wow, a whole week?! That sucks! I bet you took a super long and super hot shower once that water heater got fixed!
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The glow sticks on the carts sounds pretty nifty, they don’t have that here on our grocery carts. I’d of snickered at the ladies screaming, too 🙂 tres funny.
The longest I have been without power, that wasn’t of the camping sort, was around three days. About seven years ago there was a huge winter storm, knocked out the majority of the province for quite awhile, and I was lucky where I lived to only be without power for that long, other places were without power for nearly a week. I was living in town, and had just moved out on my own and was living with an old friend. It was so cold. The living room was warmer (or least cold), so we pushed the two long sofas together and brought all of our bedding out and piled it on top. I had layers of clothing on, and I still couldn’t keep warm. I was so worried about my parents living out in the woods and not having heat, and because they lived so far out of town, their power would be one of the last on the list to be restored, but when we rebuilt the house, they installed radiant in-floor heating, so they were fine as kind.
I am very addicted to electricity, too. Specifically, the Internet. I’m glad we don’t drink tea or coffee though and have to go through that sort of hassle to have it when there is no power.
Sounds like the same event that WIGSF mentioned. Your folks had a lot of foresight to get that radiant heat installed! I want that in my dream home too. I hate the blowing of the forced air systems.
It’s hard to get warm! We had a furnace break on us once, and it got down to nearly freezing in our house at the time. Electricity rocks. In stereo. 🙂
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Well, there’s the yearly ice storm taking out the power. Power outages are why I will never have anything but a gas water heater and stove, if at all possible. When the ice knocks out the power, we block off doorways and leave the oven door open.
Lots of people do that in the winter around here. Of course, the gas co always says not to do that, but dang, when you’re cold, you’re cold!
I’ve worked in retail a lot over the years. Power outages at Walmart meant we had to go round up all the customers so they wouldn’t steal anything in the dark. At the lumber yard we used little handheld scanners connected to a satellite to check people out, only they were made for inventory stuff, so they were awkward to use. We had to get out calculators and flashlights and actually do math. Nervewracking when there’s a chauvanistic blowhard staring at you, and the lumberyard was full of that sort.
I’ve seen a lot of theft at grocery stores too – worked in one many years ago, but I don’t think anyone there that day stole anything.
My first job, our boss wouldn’t let us use the change feature, so we all had to do the math all the time. We had to count the change back to every customer. I think I still know all the combos for adding up to 100! LOL
Glad you got your precious power back. 🙂
Thanks! Me too! 😀
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If there’s one thing I’m addicted to, it’s electricity. I don’t know how people lived without it.
Me either! I feel so lucky to live in this time. 🙂
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