Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Blackout

I've got no power.

The temperature shot up to about 100 degrees this week and Con Ed couldn't handle it. We noticed an issue Monday night when the dvd player ran with no sound. The lights looked like one bulb had burnt out. We spent the evening trying to watch dvds on the laptop. It runs fine on the battery but overheated almost instantly. I read and went to sleep.

I'm freelancing again so I got to spend the day in Manhattan under central air. It's the first time I've been happy to work in an office in a long time. It's not like I could watch the five hours of "Star Trek" on SpikeTV anyway.

That night, Renee and I decided to avoid the house and went to the movies instead. We saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest but I'll get to that tomorrow. On the way home the sky exploded with lightning. The rain poured down. All the street lights were out so driving was a bit hairy but we were glad the heat wave had broken. Maybe the power would return.

Nope.

Turns out the storm did more damage, overloading power lines and darkening LaGuardia airport. Since we live five minutes from LaGuardia, we had nothing. We slept in the living room and took off early this morning.

Between the the limited trains, the slower service and the overloaded buses, it took me an hour and a half to get into work today. I'm at the Improv tonight so my house has another fifteen hours to come back to life. Let's see if it does. I can deal with the loss of air conditioning, light and refrigerated food. But if I can't get my tv back on, I'll go a little squirrely.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That sucks dude. I would definitely be inside with AC cranked, wherever I could find it.

Stay cool!

Anonymous said...

Everyone is suggesting to put the AC on full blast--if we have to go down, we may as well do so swinging!

It is crazy, but we do have our cell phones to wake us up to get to work on time..horray?..I have never been so happy to have a gym membership! I see that the elderly in our hood are doing fine, thank God the temp. is lower and humidity is gone!

We did break out the candles and enjoyed the storm--it was soooo cool!

I hope everyone else is back to normal too!!!

Anonymous said...

Andrew, told me you have no power. I figured I'd get in contact with you this way since he has everyone's # and my cell sucks...

It may get worse before it gets better. The long Island City power grid is expected to fail sometime tonight. No power, no subway service, LIRR ...