My power's out

I'm sitting in a cafe in my neighborhood right now. The electricity has been out at home since Friday night when we had a pretty severe thunderdstorm.

I've never felt so glad to have a gas stove. It has an electric ignition so I've had to light it with matches, but at least I've been able to eat cooked food for the past few days. Ou water heater is gas, too, but I still haven't figured out if it's working or if I'm just using up the stored hot water. The weather hasn't been unbearably hot so I'm not missing the fans or air conditioner too much. We've been packing the fridge and freezer with ice and changing it regularly as it melts. Altogether, we're coping pretty well.

There is a tree down in my alley about 2 houses down form me, and a spaghetti-tangle of power lines on the ground. So far I have seen 2 power company trucks in the alley; each stayed about 30 minutes, did nothing, then left. (I've spent a lot of the weekend cursing about the power compnay.) Apparently there are somwhere between19,000 and 30,000 people in the metro area that still don't have power. On Saturday the power company (may they rot in hell forever) said everybody's power would be back on tonight (Monday). Yesterday they said we might have power Tuesday night. I'm not sure if there are any new updates, but it really seems like they aren't doing anything, at least not in my neighborhood.

I feel like I have no right to complain - I still have water, gas, and phone, and it's not winter - but I am still so angry at the power company! I should just be a more evolved person who can sit in silence and do nothing and be content, but I'm just not. I want to play music and run my sewing machine and stand in front of the fridge with the door open looking at the food. I want to sit in a room with the lights on!

Mostly I've been amusing myself by playing Scrabble with my HB, doing logic puzzles, going out to eat, and sitting on the couch drinking beer and complaining. This weekend was also Irish Fair, and I had a good time, mostly. I'll do a longer entry on that later (including costumes!) when I have power at home. Now that it's Monday, though, and the HB is at work, I feel so lonely. I can't play music to distract myself, I can't sew on the machine. I went on a nice bike ride this morning, which was a good time-killer.

The last crappy thing is that I can now abandon the remaining hope of finishing any of my last-minute State Fair projects - without the machine over the weekend and today, I've lost too much time even if I do get power tomorrow (which is unlikely). The dropoff closes noon Wednesday. I really hope we have power by next weekend so I can at least bring in my baking entries! (I can light the stove with a match, but not the oven.)

Anyway, I just wanted to complain a little. I'm not sure when I'll be checking my mail/LJ next.