Let there be light

So, like, at 11:55 am, the power went off. And I'm sitting at my computer - mid-memo, mind you - and I'm thinking, oh this will be a brief thing, 10-15 minutes. But no. It was 3 hours. A full three hours. Do you know how boring three hours without electricity is?
After taking a brief nap, I decided that I should go back to school and hang out there. I figured, Big Major University must have its own power supply, yes? So off I went blithely. And voila - nearly met my death a block away from my apartment. All of the traffic lights were out.

There are seven four-way intersections between me and school. I had to take a left turn at the first one. There are 40,000 18-year olds at this school in SUVs. Driving here is a hazard on a good day, forget when all of the traffic lights go out. So I inched along (bopping, btw, to music in my car) and finally, there was a police officer at the second to last interesection - the one with the train tracks. So that was much better.

As I was heading into the academic building, I saw a classmate and he said, "Nope, no power, go home." But I had class at 2:30 and I figured I could either sit and stare at my fingernails at home or at school. I opted for school. Our academic building is state-of-the-art. It's actually rather crazy when you consider some of the buildings on campus are in a state of disrepair. Anyhow, the emergency lighting was on and as I walked in, I saw some undergrads taking a test in the pagoda that's just outside of our building. Considering it was a windy (but hot) day, I thought, "Gah, that's gotta suck." Inside, the main lobby was light enough but the rest of the building was fairly dark - though there were emergency lights on. I heard rumors that there were people stuck in the elevator. Now that would be really sucky.

It was around 1:30 and I just meandered. Talked to a few people but most of my fellow partners-in-crimes had already headed off (including to the pool, which sounded darn good to me), and I finally went to the masters lounge where I settled down to go through my surveys (n=120) and realized what a badly written survey we had. ::Sigh:: And then J came in and we talked about how the power was out throughout the county and actually even all the way to the Infamous City to the Northwest. Time, btw, creeps by very slowly when there is no light.

Anyway, I went down to my classroom at 2 and saw my classmates assembled outside. Verdict was in: we were going to have class. One classmate fretted about the $90 worth of groceries she had bought at 11:30 pm the night before, I wondered if I had a flashlight because, you know, bedtime at eight o'clock was just not appealing. And then I was trying to figure out how I would finish the ballots - whether the power would even come on long enough for me to get them done before 8 tonight. And if not, how would I let someone know that I was going to be late?

Then the professor showed up and voila, we had class. Right. There. In. The. Hall. I kid you not. There is an alcove with a study table and chairs and since we're a small class - 14 (only 8 showed today) - we crowded around this table - kicking out a poor undergrad in the process. The power came back at 3 pm, just when we were all becoming reconciled that there would be no "American Idol" for us tonight.

And now, I must eat, as my plans for lunch were thwarted by the blackout.