Ok, so it has been forever and a day since I last updated. I tried to update a couple of times a couple weeks ago, but both times, Diaryland crapped out on me and my entries were lost.

So yea, I was hit by the blackout of 2003. Also known as the "Price of Freedom." God, the media is still milking the aftereffects and public paranoia about terrorism, isn't it? I'd say a blackout is the price of living in an industrialized society dependent upon electricity, but what the hell do I know?

As much as the blackout sucked, it was quite an adventure. It's not exactly my first. When I lived in Boston, we had summer brownouts all the damn time, because people didn't think that running three air conditioners per apartment were any kind of drain on the antiquated and overpopulated energy outputs of the old city. What I noticed back then was that when the brownouts occurred, our entire street would come outside and hang out. Some would share their beer, others would play frisbee in the street, some would play cards on their patios. We were all relatively the same 20-something age, so it was a sort of odd game with all of us, wondering when the power would come back and how long it would last before it browned out again.

Same thing happened here, only with much more panic and hysteria. Granted, in Boston, the brownouts would only affect certain blocks, so no one really needed to worry about surviving the weekends, but people here in the suburbs? Need. To. Chill.

So, I worked really late the night before the blackout. I barely ate that day, so when i finally got home around 3 am, I realized I was starving. I ended up eating the tiny bit of pasta I had with tabasco sauce. Quite the culinary delight. I looked for options and even considered taking Scott's car to go to 7-11, but then figured that it's probably best I don't eat so late in the night and that I can go shopping when I get up.

Fast forward to the next day. I don't wake up until about 3 and it takes me another hour before I decide there are better places to be than my bed. I am sort os laying there, half awake, eyes closed, just enjoying tthe comfort of my bed when I decide to call my mom, get the car and go shopping. As I sit up, I realize I have no power in my room. I assumed it was a localized incident, so I trip all the circuit breakers in my place. Nothing. Then I think maybe it is a brownout of some sort, so I call my mom only to find out she has been calling for half an hour to find out if I have power. By this time, it is 4:30 and I now know that our entire building has lost power. Since neither of us have power, we figure what better time to leave our apartments? I decide to go grocery shopping and when I return, my mom was to go to the casinos.

Mind you, at this point, I am famished. I was starving 12 hours earlier, by this point, I was ready to eat my own hand. As I am leaving the building, my neighbor comes in and starts filling me in on what's going on and how they don't expect to restore any power for at least a few hours. I then realize that because of this, shopping is out of the question. So, might as well order a pizza, right? DOH! Can't do that, either.

I walk down to my moms and we drive around for about ten minutes to see if anything on the block has any food. Of course, the blackout happened right before rush hour, so of course, our block has possibly the most congested traffic I will ever see it have ever again. Rush hour here is bad when the lights DO work, nevermind when they don't.

In the end, I raided mom's fridge. My mom is truly the best:-)

So I return home and sit around for a while, enjoying the fact that I keep the apartment so cold that it will be hours before the cool air dissipates. I go outside, talk to the neighbors some more and nearly lock myself out, which resulted in a funny show for a neighbor who watched my attempt to break into my own apartment through my bedroom window.

Scott finally comes home about two hours later. He had gone to work. In a restaurant. Without power. Despite the news reports, the owner thought that they would miraculously regain power and be able to stay open, so all the employees had to stay, *just in case*.

Scott and I played cards, read books, painted, etc. Mostly, we played cards. Especially after we discovered the fifth of rum in the freezer. We had batteries for the radio, so we listened to tapes, drank, and played rummy by candlelight. It was loads of fun, actually. Of course, by this time, the air was starting to heat up, especially given the 30 or so odd candles places around the apartment. My mom randomly found a grocery store open, so she went out and bought a bunch of crap, then brought us three grocery bags with snacks, chicken nuggest (that we could cook on the gas stove), macaroni and cheese and soda. Like I said, my mom rules:-)

Falling asleep was a bitch that night. I got all of 3 hours of sleep before the loud kids woke me up at 9am playing outside.

Friday was just crazy, though. We both came out of our rooms around 11:30, because we overheard the neighbors outside talking about how local gas stations had gas. Since Scott was on empty, we decided to see if we could get some. We drive to the area with the gas stations (two of them on one corner) and see lines of people waiting with portable gas tanks. Unfortunately, we did not have one. But, we did have enough gas to get to Meijer's, where we might be able to buy one, assuming they were open. For those who don't know, meijer's is a huge mega-mart type place, where you can buy groceries, clothes, auto parts, books, etc. They have pretty much everything you might want. Kind of like a Super KMart, only much bigger.

We get there and the place is a fucking mob zone. People coming out of the store had carts so stacked, it looked like they were preparing their bomb shelters for the coming nuclear winter. I honestly don't see how these people thought they needed so many supplies. At worst, we would have had to wait until Monday to regain power.

We finally find the gas cans, run back to the grocery aisles to get a couple 12 packs of water and attempt to find batteries. The store was out of all batteries, except triple A's. Now it was time to go get the gas.

We waited in line with the rest of the shmucks and all was relatively peaceful. We did have aguy try to cut in front of us and we had words, but no major fights ensued. We only had to wait about an hour. The people who drove and waited in traffic to get gas were waiting upwards of two hours. Gas hogs. We then ran around to a few other stores, trying to find batteries and other odds and ends, but with little luck. We return home around 3:30, throw on some tunes and generally resign ourselves to staying in and finding ways to entertain ourselves without the joy of working.

Of course, my work got power right around this time and I was unlucky enough to finally have my voice mail running and even unlickier still to find myself picking up the phone on the odd chance that someone had called.

Yep. Work called. They just got power, they want us all in for our shifts and they want us there fast, so we can open on the fly. I was a bit disappointed. Granted, Friday is always one of my money nights, but I really had gotten over it enough to enjoy having the night off. Being the dutiful employee that I am, however, I returned the call and told them I would be there shortly.

We got mobbed when word got out that we were up and running. We got seriously busy. I made great money and wound up closing the bar that night. People boozed like I haven't seen for a long time. I sold very little beer and a lot more liquor than usual. People tipped more generously than I thought possible. The worst tip I received all night was 20%. It was great. My block was one of the last local blocks to receive power. We got it back around 1am, so when I got home, I had power again. Took hours to cool the place off, but the 76 degrees it was when i entered was far better than the 82 it was when i left.

Saturday, however, was a whole different story. I had to open that morning and I worked a double. I started the day by getting chemical burns. Yep. You read it right. I was changing the chemicals for our glass dishwasher and as I was putting them away, the "Super Trump" splashed me. Directly in my eye. Mind you, this stuff has acid in it. The warnings state that it may cause blindness. I was not happy. Unhappier still when I attempted to open my eye, like an idiot. I felt the burn, and started screaming for someone to come help me. I guess one of my co-workers was walking across the place to help, but then started booking it when she heard me yesll, "Someone help me, someone come help me NOW."

She led my blinded self to the bathroom, where I had to flush my eye for about ten minutes. Then I went back into the kitchen to get the official first-aid kit eye washer thingy-ma-jigs. I started to panic midly when I noticed the eye wash had minute amounts of acid in it, because I feared some weird chemical reaction. What was better, using the acid-infused eye wash, or the e-coli riddled tap water? I used someone's bottled water instead.

I tried to make light of the whole situation, because my manager wanted to send me to the clinic, but they didn't answer their phones. Apprently, they had not gotten their power back yet either. So, I had to settle for out homemade rememdy and hope I don't have a hole seared into my cornea. I held a wet napkin around my eye for half the day, because everytime I took it off, the skin started to burn. Today, I woke up and looked at it. Not only do I have puffy eye from the tears (every girl knows about the morning after puffy eye), but I also have several small, scabby red marks where my skin was clearly burned. Lovely. I am so pretty.

Now the restaurant is open for business as usual. The only stipulation, as far as we know, is that we cannot serve the water. Ice is ok, because it is distilled through the ice-maker. Only, it isn't, as the brewmaster proceeds to inform us several hours later. So now, we can serve everything except ice and water. Only not, as the news reports inform us later. See, the soda guns use tap water, so we cannot give our soda anymore, either. Everything but water, ice and anything out of the gun. Now we are down to coffee and iced tea without ice. Only not, because then we learn that the tea and coffee brewers do not heat the water enough to kill the bacteria. Now we are down to serving milk. Only not, as we see reports that every restaurant in our county is supposed to be shut down.

At this point, we are down to serving bottled beer only, because the dishes,. as faw as we know, are not properly sanitized. The manager finally gets ahold of the general manager trying to ascertain what we will do. First he chastises her for calling the health department, because we all know that profit is better than complying with instructions. He decides we will stay open for business as usual, until the health department comes and shuts us down.

Of course, word soon spreads that we are one of the ONLY open restauramnts in the entire county. Beung a brewery, we were able to distill 300 gallons of water, thus justifying staying open against mandates. They finally got cans of soda to serve, after hours of having virtually nothing non-alcoholic to serve, and eventually I was able to field questions about why we can't serve this or that without blinking. Seriously, don't people watch the news ever? I could not fathom why people didn't understand that if THEY can't drnk THEIR water, they certainly cant drink ours.

People last night just were not as gracious. They had returned to their usual demanding, rude selves. They didn't get that their food orders were placed behind literally 60 others and that I am sorry, but your well done steak is going to take a good hour to make. Tips were crappy, despite the level of service and sometimes, service wasn't great due to the large mobs of people who enetered the place all within the same 20 minute span. Why don't people understand that when you are the only place open for miles and miles, they are going to have to have patience and understanding. The circmstances were difficult for all of us, not just the customers.

I freaked out several times during the night, not just because I was tired, cranky, and had a fucked up eye, but because the stress levels were high. Severeal of us, in our panic, threatened to siomply walk out and leave the place, because we could not handle it anymore.

When it seemed like the barrage would never end, our manager announced that he would be closing the kitchen at 10pm, 3 hours earlier than usual. We rejoiced and suddenly, the night looked quite a bit brighter. Knowing I would be the first cut, due to my double shift, I knoew I only had about an hour or two left before I could leave. I finally finished my 14 hour shift at midnight. I gave away my Sunday shift. If I had to go in today, I might have killed someone.

I have quite enjoyed this day off, my broken body and my scabby eye. I enjoy it a hell of a lot more with the lights on and the tv blaring. It's business as usual again.

Edited to add: Two things. One, I just saw that they are doing a Temptation Island Three. I am so damn excited about this. That show was so skanky and degenerate, it was great. Two, I just saw the news report in my city saying how so many restaurants stayed open, despite the mandate to close. The manager at a place they interviewed simply said they "could" have called the health department to find out what was going on. The reporter said, "should have?" He replied, "could have." This went on for a while. In short, everyone is playing dumb, like they do not know what is going on, no one is boiling their water adequately and even after getting shut down, places are continuing to open up again. Ahhhh, ignorance is grand, is it not?