In the Dark

The past 24 hours have been a trip. It all started last night-- I watched the new Martha Stewart "Apprentice" show (very good!). Afterwards, I switched over to watch part II of the season premier of Lost. I got about 10 minutes into it and the power went off. My natural instinct kicked in and the first thing I did was look out the window to see if it was just me. The city's cut my power off so many times that I always assume that that's the case. This time I was relieved to see that the street lights were out and all of my neighbor's houses were dark, too. The first 10 minutes were fun: looking for a flashlight in the dark-- finding one and realizing the batteries were dead-- searching for new batteries in the dark-- finding them and repairing the flashlight. I found some candles and lit the house back up again. What to do now-- I can't go to bed because I needed to set my alarm clock first-- didn't want to oversleep. So, I decided to go for a walk around the block to see how many other people were suffering the effects of a power outage. I figured I'd run into lots of neighbors, sitting on their porches, having a late night beer and complaining because they missed part II of the season premier of "Lost", but grateful that they at least got to see Martha Stewart's new show. I was disappointed. There were very few neighbors out looking into the sky and asking God why the streets had to be so dark, and why we had to miss part II of "Lost". The only people I saw were the non-English-speaking Mexicans down the street- they were on their front porch, drinking a cerveza. I said "Hola!" to them, but they didn't answer back; probably bummed about missing part II of the season premiere of "Lost" and didn't want to talk about it. Then I remembered all of the lighted candles in my house and the houseload of puppies that are visiting- I envisioned little tails wagging and knocking over the candles. I rushed home, blew the candles out and got in my car. I just needed to see how far-spread this blackout was. After a few minutes of driving I realized that it was just my block. I came home and sat in the sunroom and stared at my backdoor neighbor's house. She had plenty of light. I almost felt like she was rubbing it in- spot lights were shining on her backyard- the whole place was lit up. I figured she was just showing off. After a couple of hours, it dawned on me that I have an alarm clock on my cell phone. I set the alarm and went to bed. Within 2 minutes, the power came back on again. I checked the TV, just in case they had delayed the programming because of the blackout on Westwood Avenue, but it seems that the world carried on without me-- the news was on and they didn't even mention the blackout.