No, no...fear not. The blog author is still alive. Despite rumors to the contrary, Amy has not made good on her promise to rip both of my kidneys out for launching the "World's Most Intersting Man" series. Instead, the whole family's been preoccupied by the fact that we went from 5:30am Sunday to 3:30am Thursday with no electricity, phones, internet and hot water, courtesy of Tropical Storm Irene.
Despite all of the dire warnings ahead-of-time, it was a little embarassing to see how unprepared we were for a power outage. For example, after the power went out it took me about 20 minutes to find a flashlight, by which point the sun had come up and I no longer needed one. But we gradually got in gear and broke out our Coleman camping stove, some propane tanks, candles, matches, my running head lamp and those elusive flashlights.
On the downside:
1. We obliterated Amy's weekly food budget by eating out roughly 800% more than we usually do during a 4-day period;
2. The dirty laundry pile grew to about waist-high and our pantry became a Super-Fund site;
3. We lost more refrigerator food than we cared to think about;
4. No vacuuming took place for four days;
5. The first day of school for the kids was shoved back two days;
6. I lost two business days worth of income as the law practice came to a screeching halt;
7. We were forced to spend a couple of hours at Glastonbury High School while no less than five of our electronic devices were beging charged at the "emergency charging stations" set up by the town, and
8. Our showers (normally a refreshing, restorative experience) became 50 seconds of intense torture under ice-cold water.
On the upside, we got a ton of reading done, the boys had no TV access for four days, and we now have a sparkling-clean Sue-like refrigerator.
Oh, and we have a much stronger appreciation for the conveniences provided by electricity.
Gotta love it!
