POWER! IT'S A WONDERFUL THING!

On Thursday night at about 7:00 pm we lost power. We didn't get power back until last night, roughly 72 hours after we lost it. Holy moly, is it ever nice to have heat and lights again! You don't realize how automatic it is to walk into a room and switch on the lights until you can't. We were able to take hot showers on Friday morning, but that was it...until last night. I think I washed my hair twice and face about 3 times. No, really. There is something so nice about a hot shower.

There are still lots and lots of people without power...I hope it comes back soon. The apartment building behind us is apparently on a different power grid as they didn't get power back until this morning. I would have been so pissed if I lived there! Because we live in an apartment & a generator is not really an option, we did keep the fireplace going (thank goodness we can burn wood!). We also played a lot of poker, blackjack, rummy, uno, and monopoly. By yesterday morning we were both starting to crack up a bit. We do have an emergency radio/flashlight/blah blah blah thing - it can be either battery-powered or hand-cranked powered, so we did have some Christmas music, which was nice. But still - "cabin fever" really can happen!

Yesterday we did go up North a little ways to where there was power restored just to be inside somewhere with heat. We walked around a mall, & I started having evil thoughts about everyone who did have power. Of course you could tell the people who didn't have power - the greasy hair and "I'm so over it" expressions - but the people who didn't have greasy hair were on my shit list. Not really, but it was to the point where Husband & I tried to get our hair cuts just to get a hair wash. SERIOUSLY.

We went to 2 movies yesterday: Borat and Apocalypto. Borat was hysterically funny. Seriously, go see it! Apocalypto was awesome - not at all funny, but excellent. It was such a great story. It's a little violent, but it doesn't feel gratuitous.

Since I work for a very large company, I get three paid days of Bereavement Leave per year. I'm taking that leave today, tomorrow, and Wednesday. The service was on Saturday, and in some ways it was nice to have a quiet, media-free weekend so I could take pause.

So what do I have planned for these few days? Oh, something very exciting - studying. That and getting all the Christmas presents sent out and Holiday cards written out and sent...oh, and packing since we're moving next week after Christmas. Sigh.

I hope everyone is enjoying their Holiday season. We had a tree up (fake, I would never tempt my cats with a real tree, yet)...but it didn't last long. It was only up for 2 days, and in that time it got taken down approximately 12 times. No, really. Apparently my cats hate Christmas. Little grinches. We decided it wasn't worth the fight this year when we're not even going to be home during Christmas weekend. If we were, I might have considered nailing it to the floor and/or tying it to the walls with fishing line.

Well, it's about time for me to go back to sleep for a spell before I get up and commence studying (*sob*). Have a jolly day.