Dark

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. ~Genesis 1:3

You don't realize how much you depend on a thing until you're forced to live without it. In the past month, the power has gone out at our house at least three times, and I have come to realize that electricity is very useful. Ha.

Early in the month, the outage was relatively brief; after coming home to a house with no lights, Rita and I decided to venture to Chipotle (it happened to be opening day) for dinner. When we got there, it was insanely packed, with a line stretching around the building (and I'm pretty sure they weren't even offering free burritos like they did in State College on opening day), and so we drove back to Midtown to have sushi. (I have since had Chipotle, and I've gotta say, it's not as good as I'd remembered. I actually prefer Swanky's, a local chain.) The second time, I went to Dunkin Donuts (god bless you, Dunkin Donuts) to do work. This was pre-new Toshiba computer (woot!) and my old one failed to cooperate at Dunkin, so much of my time was spent grading stuff. I was quite productive that night. At first, the utility company had said we could expect power back by 10. Then, 4 a.m. At least they were giving us estimates.

This time around, nothing. Electricity went out Tuesday night around 11 p.m. during a huge-ass storm. Tornado sirens were going off, thunder was rumbling for seconds at a time, rain was pounding against the windows. I was the first in the area to report the outage, said the MLGW hotline. No power all of Wednesday, but we went to a bar for dinner and trivia and won some free beer, thanks to Andy's knowledge of the Bible.

I know nothing about electricity grids, but it seems to me that there's gotta be a more efficient way to restore power to this city. Or prevent outages in the first place. Shouldn't a utility company recognize that when customers lose power over and over due to weather, its lines or whatever are too vulnerable? Can't they fix that? Call me a White Whiner, but three outages in less than three weeks is excessive. On our same street, a block down, the houses had power. Two or three blocks in the other direction, houses had power too. I felt bad for us, and the food that was going bad in our fridge, but I felt even worse for the bars and restaurants on the corner of our street, losing revenue by the hour.

The power was finally restored around 1 a.m. on Thursday morning. My yogurt still tasted fine, I'm happy to report.