Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

For my job, I end up watching a lot of cable news. So I was paying attention earlier this year when New York City and much of the Northeastern United States lost power.

Philadelphia was spared, and I was feeling pretty smug. I might have even gloated.

Well, karma just caught up with me.

Last night I had completed one assignment and had half an hour to kill before I could start the next one. So I started going through floppy disks, looking for an old picture of myself someone had e-mailed me awhile ago.

I was opening up pretty much any image file and found one labeled only with a number. Curious, I clicked on it. The photo was a nude male pinup I'd obtained years ago from a free web site. Just then, the lights cut out and everything powered down.

"I've gone blind," I heard my conscience chiding.

My very next irrational thought was that the file had been corrupted and this, in turn, had somehow led to the blackout in my apartment. But it didn't take me long to realize this couldn't possibly be the case.

I walked outside, discovering that every other house in my neighborhood had gone dark, too.

Since I'm a big candle person, it didn't take long to locate a few and light them up. When, ten minutes later, the lights were still out, I called The Gryphon to seek some sympathy. Much to my surprise, he offered that, if I wanted to, we could drive to his office and I could finish my evening's assignments from there.

"Sure," I said. "If you don't mind."

Of course, my dog, Una, would have to stay home alone in the dark, but I figured she'd sleep most of the time anyway. Remembering the coverage of the New York blackout, I unplugged or turned off pretty much everything in the house, so that there wouldn't be a huge power drain when the power came back on. I left the living room light switched on, though, to keep Una company, should the power come back.

Once we got to The Gryphon's office, it took him awhile to set up a computer for me the way I needed it. Meanwhile, my dad called me on my cell phone with good news. He just got his new, custom-built computer. This is great, because it means I can do my work from his house when I visit and therefore take as much time as I want for vacation without ever missing a day of work.

It was kind of ironic, I thought, that he should be calling me at that very moment to announce the availability of a computer, given mine was down.

I called home to find out if my answering machine was working yet, which would indicate the power had returned. It wasn't, so I knew that we'd made the right choice to drive all the way to The Gryphon's office. I wouldn't have been able to get my work started any sooner by chilling at home.

Besides, this was an adventure, right?

I worked on my assignments, and The Gryphon got some programming done and occasionally brought me coffee. I even managed to finish everything only about 10 minutes late per assignment, which wasn't too bad, considering we'd lost an hour and a half due to the power outage.

In the wee hours of the morning, we struck out for home. When we got there, we found two very surprising things.

The first was that the heat wasn't on. I felt the radiators and discovered they were practically cold to the touch. I'd never bothered to find out what kind of heat I had, since my landlord pays that bill. Apparently, it's electric.

The second surprise was that the back door was open. Seemingly, in my haste to leave, I'd neglected to pull the back door shut firmly enough to latch it, after letting Una out for a last minute pee break. The heavy duty wind had then, presumably, blown it open.

So not only had the heat been off for that entire time, but a cold wind had been blowing through the apartment.

The power still out, I set the alarm on my cell phone, and the three of us cuddled up under a pile of blankets and made it through the night.

Sure enough, we woke up and there was still no heat and no electricity. The dawn was chilly. It reminded me of waking up in the woods after camping overnight, and that first chill you get, stepping out of your sleeping bag in shorts.

I decided I had to put on something warm, so I pulled out my Kermit the Frog sweater, also known as the pea soup sweater, which is a vintage long-sleeved mock turtleneck the exact shade of Kermit. I love this sweater but had stored it for years at my old room in my mom's house, because I wasn't able to fit it until losing weight recently.

It was perfect for a day like this.

There was no point in sticking around the apartment, and I needed to check the Wild Violet post office box anyway, so The Gryphon and I took a train downtown. The only stipulation to my tagging along with him was that, every once in awhile, I was required to sing, "It's Not Easy Being Green."

We ate at the Marathon Grill downtown, and I had delicious chocolate chip banana pancakes and a fat free mocha smoothie. From there, I called home and was overjoyed to hear my answering machine pick up. I left an exuberant message for Una, knowing she could hear it as it recorded. I promised her I'd be home soon and take her for a walk. I told The Gryphon the meal was on me, for helping me out last night.

The Gryphon caught a cab, dropping me off at the post office along the way. When I got home, Una stared at me expectantly, having heard my message, until I relented and took her for the promised walk.

My heat is on again, my dog and I are finishing up our walk and I'm dictating the events of the last nine hours or so into my mini tape recorder.

"What lesson have we learned today, Stimpy?"

"Don't look at soft porn?"

"No, you eeeee-diot! Get gas heat!"

Copyright 2003 by Alyce Wilson

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