Preface To Bulls: The Power Out

It has been a weird day.  I took a nap as is my wont & woke up, ready to make dinner, & there was a magnificent thunderstorm happening.  (I could've slept through it, but the wife woke me by saying, "Wake up & fix me dinner, depressed person!")  As I walked into the kitchen, everything in the house just stopped working.  At first, it seemed like there was still power, as the washer or dryer continued to spin even as it lost electricity.  But no, the whole house was off.

Here's the news, which I was able to access thanks to my smarty-pants phone: power outage story.

We decided to order out, but it took a while - probably a nearby cell phone tower was out or otherwise incapacitated.  We managed to call one of our few favorite local restaurants - the poorly named Asian Wind - & I ventured out into the world.

Two things first: our garage door opener is of course electric.  So I had to hold the door open as the wife drove the car out.

The other thing was Twitter.  When I finally got some bars, I checked the Twitterworld to see what folks were saying about the power outage.  What they said was, basically, DON'T GO DOWNTOWN.  Apparently students are moving in right now & the absence of power took out all the traffic lights.  Crash smash chaos.  But Lexington loves its sirens, & the power wasn't out for five minutes before we heard screaming sirens all around the city.

I didn't see any accidents, but I did see people being kind as traffic cops waved us through intersections without lights.  It wasn't much of a problem getting to the restaurant to pick up the food, but there was a problem with finding a place to park - lots of folks were escaping from their homes to go out to eat.

We watched old SCTV episodes on the computer while we ate by candlelight.

Which is all my way of saying that I meant to write something else but the world intervened.

I used to tell folks that big storms like we have in Texas don't really happen around here.  At least with the fierceness or regularity that is characteristic of Texas thunderstorms.  But I can't do that anymore.

Man, I am glad the power's back on.  It's sad, strange, & weird how our lives - or at least my life - needs its electronics.