I grew up outside of town (a rural-ish area) and we lost power a fair amount. In the last 10 years of urban living, however, I have grown accustomed to NOT losing power and (I’m not gonna lie) I prefer it.
So, when we lost electricity late one Friday night in July I was slightly annoyed but was also fairly sure it would be back on when we awoke, as it usually is.
Level of frustration: 20% (equivalent to: the ellipticals in the fitness center are all in use and I have to wait)
The electricity wasn’t back on when we awoke.
Level of frustration: 25% (equivalent to: the ellipticals in the fitness center are all in use and I have to wait ….and one of them is being used by somebody who is also talking on their cell phone…and thereby not using the elliptical to its full potential…while I, who WOULD use it to its full potential, am waiting…patiently, of course)
It was predicted to be a ridiculously hot weekend and I wanted AC.
There was food in the refrigerator and I didn’t want it to go bad.
AND most importantly (I’m just being honest)… it was a 3 day weekend and I had hours of archived tivo to get through (several episodes of “Dance Moms”, a month’s worth of “Fashion Police” and at least one lifetime movie...maybe 2).
Level of frustration: 30% (equivalent to: A new episode of “Glee” is pre-empted for a football game)
In an attempt to overcome the annoyance, I ventured out for a long Saturday run with the most positive of all possible attitudes, convinced that the power would be back when I returned.
3 hours later, as I made my way back to the general neighborhood, my typically not-so-powerful powers of observation were on super high alert for even the smallest sign electricity:
Little store ½ mile away from building: closed for the day (not a good sign)
CVS 4 blocks away from building: open for business (good sign)
Office building 4 blocks away from building (but on the opposite side of the street: dark (uh oh)
Café on corner: open (yippee!)
My building: annoyed-looking residents sitting out front, in the shade of the building, reading real, actual books….not a kindle in site.
Damn.
And now, in addition to no electricity, the generator was out of gas so we had no elevators.
Level of frustration: 40% (equivalent to: A new episode of “Mad Men” is pre-empted for football. Yes, I know this is not at all realistic as Mad Men is on AMC and football wouldn’t be on AMC, but I felt a very real need to throw “Mad Men” into the blog post somewhere to make it clear that I do, in fact, watch at least one grown up television show.)
I was a sweaty, tired, thirsty and disillusioned mess and my feet and my positive-ness were dragging as I made my way into the building. In the lobby I found even more annoyed residents (the indoor annoyed residents, incidentally, made the outdoor annoyed residents...the ones reading in front of the building... appear positively zen-like).
As I stood for a moment, surveying the situation, I listened to my fellow indoor residents complaining at various volumes (volumes based, from what I could gather, on a combination of the degree of their frustration and their own personal flair for the dramatic):
Many complained to the members of the leasing staff (who were extremely patient as they did not work for the power company and had absolutely no power to in any way fix the situation).
Some complained to each other (it’s amazing how annoyance can bring total strangers *who normally don’t even glance at each other* together into one big brother/sisterhood of misery).
Others complained loudly to the people on the other end of their cell phones, which seems like a particular waste of cell phone battery life when the electricity is out indefinitely (but who am I to judge).
Level of frustration: 50% (equivalent to: Having to go to the DMV…any DMV…at any time…for any reason)
Tired of the hot, loud lobby (and making extremely snarky internal accusations as to why people weren’t just taking the stairs) I decided to walk down to the vending machine to get a cold drink before taking the stairs up to my muggy 8th floor home.
Obviously the vending machine did not work and I did not get a cold drink….because vending machines require power…and the power was out…a logical point to some and obviously not so much to others.
Strangely , though, while we had no lights, no air, no working elevators, and no vending machines in the entire building, the equipment in the fitness center was working fine…including the treadmills and ellipticals. I still have no idea how this is possible, but, I have to admit, it felt like whatever higher power set in motion the series of events that took away our electricity also thought we all needed to work out more...and had passive aggressive tendencies.
Level of frustration: 60% (equivalent to: Having to go to the DMV a second time because when you finally got to the counter on your first visit you didn’t have all of the necessary paperwork...sigh.)
Needing desperately to display my 60% frustration to the world, I swung open the door to the stairwell and I charged through with serious attitude, the door slamming behind me to great effect (I’m sure anybody watching was very impressed by the intensity of the scene).
Then:
Darkness.
Not just any darkness.
Total, consuming, darkness.
Not able to see the hand right in front of my face darkness. Unsure of where the door is darkness.
And I then understood why people weren’t taking the stairs.
The door back to the fitness center is controlled access and requires a fob, which was tied into my shoelace but wouldn’t work anyway because the system is electrical...and we didn’t have electricity. I could start feeling my way up the stairs, but that seemed hard. Plus, it would just lead me back to “The Land of Grumpy People” (aka: the lobby). I concluded that the best course of action would be to just sit in the dark and wait for something to happen.
As the minutes (seconds) clicked by, I started to wonder… How long could I survive there in the dark?
3 hours?
A day?
A week?
Honestly, getting to a door would not have been that difficult, but being lost in my thoughts in the darkness of the stairwell was actually sort of, in a way, soothing. It was nice and cool and I couldn’t hear anyone complaining.
Maybe sitting there and thinking was actually my best option.
Maybe I could use this time in the stairwell to come up with a brilliant, groundbreaking idea about, oh I don’t know, something.
Maybe I could really take some time to more thoroughly explore the depths of my own spiritual beliefs…or start composing the draft of an epic novel that would be translated into hundreds of languages and change the world…or write a new pop song for Carly Rae Jepsen.
(after all, without electricity it’s not like there was anything better to do)
Level of frustration: Down a notch to 55% (Equivalent to: Somewhere between the two DMV scenarios)
Eventually (in less than a week…actually, in less than an hour…ok, probably less than 5 minutes) I heard noise coming from the stairwell below and there appeared a beacon of light - my “rescue” from the darkness. It may have taken the form of a fellow resident and the light of her cellphone, and she may have been willing to go only to the lobby and not all the way to the 8th floor (she was only going to the 3rd and wasn’t about to go the extra 5…), but it seemed like a sign that I needed to get up and go.
Level of frustration: 50% (Equivalent to: The DMV…the first time)
The lobby was even more crowded at this point and the collective frustration was turning manic.
One resident claimed that there was a gas smell on the 7th floor (it was promptly investigated and there was not a gas smell on the 7th floor).
A girl wanted to move out of her apartment by carrying furniture down the stairwell by the light of a camera phone.
Another resident smelled gas on the 5th floor too (there was not a gas smell on the 5th floor either).
She only had the UHaul rented for this one day and absolutely HAD to move…even if it meant carrying a huge dresser down a stairwell…in the dark.
Gas on the 3rd floor now (nope, no gas smell).
Did I mention that I was STILL sweaty gross and stinky? (and unlike the various gas smells, this smell was very real)
What? The power company told somebody it could be up to 52 more hours?
Did I mention that I STILL hadn’t gotten my cold drink?
Level of frustration: 75% and climbing (Equivalent to: flight home from vacation cancelled… stuck in a random airport - let’s say Atlanta-…for a week)
And then, as effortlessly as the lights had gone out 16 hours before * they came back on.
There were a few cheers and hugs but mostly everyone just charged for the elevators. Including, strangely, the people who just moments before were absolutely sure that there were gas leaks on floors 7, 5 and 3 and the building was going to blow.
Sick of people (and unbelievably smelly) I bypassed the elevator and took the (now lit) stairs – joyfully bounding up the 8 floors to my apartment – an apartment full of amazing things like temperature control, a working refrigerator and, yes, hours of Tivo.
Level of frustration: -5,000,000,000% (Equivalent to: Nothing. It's the utter and complete lack of frustration that can only come from the initial 5 minutes of having electricity after having not had it for over 12 hours. It's a beautiful feeling that lasts only until we again grow accustomed to having electricity and return to completely taking it for granted.)
Sorry Carly Rae, your new hit song will have to wait until our next power outage.
Post Blog Warning:
If you lose electricy and then get it back do not, for the love of all that is holy, celebrate by going to the one powered KFC in a city where only roughly 20% of the population has power.
I will not go into details of the disaster that is such restaurant (line out the door, people guarding tables, and customers having serious meltdowns over which particular types of chicken are included in which particular deals and how many sauces they are allotted) but it was rough.
Level of frustration: Really, really high but, seeing as how we had electricity and the capacity to make our own food (unlike most people in the restaurant) but had made the conscious decision to seek out and place ourselves in this particular situation (simply because we wanted fried chicken product), I can’t actually complain. We ate our meal quickly and quite happily drove home to our lovely, powered , apartment.
Frustration was also lessened by the man who walked in and, upon seeing the madness, exclaimed, “Wow, the chicken here must be really good!”
So, when we lost electricity late one Friday night in July I was slightly annoyed but was also fairly sure it would be back on when we awoke, as it usually is.
Level of frustration: 20% (equivalent to: the ellipticals in the fitness center are all in use and I have to wait)
The electricity wasn’t back on when we awoke.
Level of frustration: 25% (equivalent to: the ellipticals in the fitness center are all in use and I have to wait ….and one of them is being used by somebody who is also talking on their cell phone…and thereby not using the elliptical to its full potential…while I, who WOULD use it to its full potential, am waiting…patiently, of course)
It was predicted to be a ridiculously hot weekend and I wanted AC.
There was food in the refrigerator and I didn’t want it to go bad.
AND most importantly (I’m just being honest)… it was a 3 day weekend and I had hours of archived tivo to get through (several episodes of “Dance Moms”, a month’s worth of “Fashion Police” and at least one lifetime movie...maybe 2).
Level of frustration: 30% (equivalent to: A new episode of “Glee” is pre-empted for a football game)
In an attempt to overcome the annoyance, I ventured out for a long Saturday run with the most positive of all possible attitudes, convinced that the power would be back when I returned.
3 hours later, as I made my way back to the general neighborhood, my typically not-so-powerful powers of observation were on super high alert for even the smallest sign electricity:
Little store ½ mile away from building: closed for the day (not a good sign)
CVS 4 blocks away from building: open for business (good sign)
Office building 4 blocks away from building (but on the opposite side of the street: dark (uh oh)
Café on corner: open (yippee!)
My building: annoyed-looking residents sitting out front, in the shade of the building, reading real, actual books….not a kindle in site.
Damn.
And now, in addition to no electricity, the generator was out of gas so we had no elevators.
Level of frustration: 40% (equivalent to: A new episode of “Mad Men” is pre-empted for football. Yes, I know this is not at all realistic as Mad Men is on AMC and football wouldn’t be on AMC, but I felt a very real need to throw “Mad Men” into the blog post somewhere to make it clear that I do, in fact, watch at least one grown up television show.)
I was a sweaty, tired, thirsty and disillusioned mess and my feet and my positive-ness were dragging as I made my way into the building. In the lobby I found even more annoyed residents (the indoor annoyed residents, incidentally, made the outdoor annoyed residents...the ones reading in front of the building... appear positively zen-like).
As I stood for a moment, surveying the situation, I listened to my fellow indoor residents complaining at various volumes (volumes based, from what I could gather, on a combination of the degree of their frustration and their own personal flair for the dramatic):
Many complained to the members of the leasing staff (who were extremely patient as they did not work for the power company and had absolutely no power to in any way fix the situation).
Some complained to each other (it’s amazing how annoyance can bring total strangers *who normally don’t even glance at each other* together into one big brother/sisterhood of misery).
Others complained loudly to the people on the other end of their cell phones, which seems like a particular waste of cell phone battery life when the electricity is out indefinitely (but who am I to judge).
Level of frustration: 50% (equivalent to: Having to go to the DMV…any DMV…at any time…for any reason)
Tired of the hot, loud lobby (and making extremely snarky internal accusations as to why people weren’t just taking the stairs) I decided to walk down to the vending machine to get a cold drink before taking the stairs up to my muggy 8th floor home.
Obviously the vending machine did not work and I did not get a cold drink….because vending machines require power…and the power was out…a logical point to some and obviously not so much to others.
Strangely , though, while we had no lights, no air, no working elevators, and no vending machines in the entire building, the equipment in the fitness center was working fine…including the treadmills and ellipticals. I still have no idea how this is possible, but, I have to admit, it felt like whatever higher power set in motion the series of events that took away our electricity also thought we all needed to work out more...and had passive aggressive tendencies.
Level of frustration: 60% (equivalent to: Having to go to the DMV a second time because when you finally got to the counter on your first visit you didn’t have all of the necessary paperwork...sigh.)
Needing desperately to display my 60% frustration to the world, I swung open the door to the stairwell and I charged through with serious attitude, the door slamming behind me to great effect (I’m sure anybody watching was very impressed by the intensity of the scene).
Then:
Darkness.
Not just any darkness.
Total, consuming, darkness.
Not able to see the hand right in front of my face darkness. Unsure of where the door is darkness.
And I then understood why people weren’t taking the stairs.
The door back to the fitness center is controlled access and requires a fob, which was tied into my shoelace but wouldn’t work anyway because the system is electrical...and we didn’t have electricity. I could start feeling my way up the stairs, but that seemed hard. Plus, it would just lead me back to “The Land of Grumpy People” (aka: the lobby). I concluded that the best course of action would be to just sit in the dark and wait for something to happen.
As the minutes (seconds) clicked by, I started to wonder… How long could I survive there in the dark?
3 hours?
A day?
A week?
Honestly, getting to a door would not have been that difficult, but being lost in my thoughts in the darkness of the stairwell was actually sort of, in a way, soothing. It was nice and cool and I couldn’t hear anyone complaining.
Maybe sitting there and thinking was actually my best option.
Maybe I could use this time in the stairwell to come up with a brilliant, groundbreaking idea about, oh I don’t know, something.
Maybe I could really take some time to more thoroughly explore the depths of my own spiritual beliefs…or start composing the draft of an epic novel that would be translated into hundreds of languages and change the world…or write a new pop song for Carly Rae Jepsen.
(after all, without electricity it’s not like there was anything better to do)
Level of frustration: Down a notch to 55% (Equivalent to: Somewhere between the two DMV scenarios)
Eventually (in less than a week…actually, in less than an hour…ok, probably less than 5 minutes) I heard noise coming from the stairwell below and there appeared a beacon of light - my “rescue” from the darkness. It may have taken the form of a fellow resident and the light of her cellphone, and she may have been willing to go only to the lobby and not all the way to the 8th floor (she was only going to the 3rd and wasn’t about to go the extra 5…), but it seemed like a sign that I needed to get up and go.
Level of frustration: 50% (Equivalent to: The DMV…the first time)
The lobby was even more crowded at this point and the collective frustration was turning manic.
One resident claimed that there was a gas smell on the 7th floor (it was promptly investigated and there was not a gas smell on the 7th floor).
A girl wanted to move out of her apartment by carrying furniture down the stairwell by the light of a camera phone.
Another resident smelled gas on the 5th floor too (there was not a gas smell on the 5th floor either).
She only had the UHaul rented for this one day and absolutely HAD to move…even if it meant carrying a huge dresser down a stairwell…in the dark.
Gas on the 3rd floor now (nope, no gas smell).
Did I mention that I was STILL sweaty gross and stinky? (and unlike the various gas smells, this smell was very real)
What? The power company told somebody it could be up to 52 more hours?
Did I mention that I STILL hadn’t gotten my cold drink?
Level of frustration: 75% and climbing (Equivalent to: flight home from vacation cancelled… stuck in a random airport - let’s say Atlanta-…for a week)
And then, as effortlessly as the lights had gone out 16 hours before * they came back on.
There were a few cheers and hugs but mostly everyone just charged for the elevators. Including, strangely, the people who just moments before were absolutely sure that there were gas leaks on floors 7, 5 and 3 and the building was going to blow.
Sick of people (and unbelievably smelly) I bypassed the elevator and took the (now lit) stairs – joyfully bounding up the 8 floors to my apartment – an apartment full of amazing things like temperature control, a working refrigerator and, yes, hours of Tivo.
Level of frustration: -5,000,000,000% (Equivalent to: Nothing. It's the utter and complete lack of frustration that can only come from the initial 5 minutes of having electricity after having not had it for over 12 hours. It's a beautiful feeling that lasts only until we again grow accustomed to having electricity and return to completely taking it for granted.)
Sorry Carly Rae, your new hit song will have to wait until our next power outage.
Post Blog Warning:
If you lose electricy and then get it back do not, for the love of all that is holy, celebrate by going to the one powered KFC in a city where only roughly 20% of the population has power.
I will not go into details of the disaster that is such restaurant (line out the door, people guarding tables, and customers having serious meltdowns over which particular types of chicken are included in which particular deals and how many sauces they are allotted) but it was rough.
Level of frustration: Really, really high but, seeing as how we had electricity and the capacity to make our own food (unlike most people in the restaurant) but had made the conscious decision to seek out and place ourselves in this particular situation (simply because we wanted fried chicken product), I can’t actually complain. We ate our meal quickly and quite happily drove home to our lovely, powered , apartment.
Frustration was also lessened by the man who walked in and, upon seeing the madness, exclaimed, “Wow, the chicken here must be really good!”
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