Do not touch!Last night, Michel picked me up from work and as we pulled up at the house we noticed something odd. It was dark. I don’t mean the outside was dark which wouldn’t have been the least bit odd it being almost 6 PM. I mean the house was dark. Considering Mikey doesn’t like the dark this seemed out of the ordinary. Sure enough, our power and everyone else on our street’s power was out although all the streets around us were fine. This was the result of the 60 mph winds we had been having knocking down some tree branches which then knocked some wires down. A quick call to our power company and their automated system assured us that even though they were swamped with outages because of the winds, that power would be restored within 5 hours.

Fortunately we had candles and flashlights and, most importantly, a fully charged portable DVD player for Mikey. Mikey kept going around the house blowing all the candles out, “Happy Birthday!”, so we mostly sat in the dark and watched “Signing Times”. By 6:30 PM, Mikey was out. Sitting in the dark and having “pink eye” (he had been sent home from school earlier in the day) knocked him out so I carried him upstairs and after a little back rubbing he was done for the night. Michel went to bed too. Mikey’s OT came by but since Mikey was already asleep she volunteered to run out and get us pizza instead.

After Diane delivered the pizza and left (thanks, Diane!), that left just Beth and me sitting in the dark (although now, at least, we could light some candles). So we decided to watch “Hogan’s Heroes” on the portable DVD player. The pure genius of 60′s sitcoms left us both laughing out loud. When the DVD player gave up, we switched to my portable PC. When that ran out, we switched to Beth’s portable PC and watched Season 1 of “Get Smart,” a series written by two of the funniest men on the planet, Mel Brooks and Buck Henry.

As we sat there Beth asked me if this is what it was like when I was a kid. Apparently I was a kid before electricity. “Why yes, Beth. Back in the days of the wagon trains, we all sat by candlelight and watched DVDs on our laptop computers.”

At 11 PM, the five hours had passed and we still had no electricity. Beth’s computer gave up as the battery died so we went to bed. Michel woke me up at 3 AM to tell me we still had no electricity and I assured her that I could wait until morning for any further updates. At 6 AM when I got up, we still had no power but it finally came back on at 6:40 AM, just in time for Beth to get up for school. With Mikey home today because of his eye, I think Michel would have been very angry with the power company if we still had no power.