In The Dark

You don't really realize how much you enjoy electricity until you find yourself cold, drunk and in the dark. That's been my experience anyway.

Last weekend we were hit with what has been only one of several blizzards in New Jersey. This isn't the typical hyperbole from the local action news team. This was the National Weather Service. We got not one, but two honest to God blizzards in a matter of a few weeks. The last one knocked out the power for several hundred thousand homes. We were one of them for a bit.

Late Friday night, or early Saturday morning, depending on how you look at it, we lost power. Now because we live a little off the grid, meaning that we have well-water, oil heat, and propane cooking gas, you wouldn't think we'd be that affected by natural disasters. But take electricity away and the pump that brings the water from the well no longer works, the pump that injects oil into the heater no longer works, and even the oven doesn't seem to want to work without the aid of an electrical current. The only thing that did work was the stovetop, but only if you lit with a match.

I woke to the sound of my wife Jane and her sister Bern coming into the house. They had spent the night whooping it up at Bern's house just down the street and when they woke up without power, decided to walk through the snow storm to our house. I looked over at the clock to see what time it was, and that's when I knew.

We've lost power before. In fact, it seems like it happens all the time. We live on a state highway and if ice and snow isn't bringing a line down, it's a drunk on his way down to the shore.

But I can't remember it happening when it's this cold and you can't get anywhere because there's a foot or two of snow outside.

So, we started a fire in the dining room fireplace, closed the doors to the other rooms, and opened a bottle of vodka. Frankly, what else were we supposed to do? We couldn't make coffee, as we didn't have any water. There was alcohol, plenty of ice, and canned mixers. We didn't have anywhere to be. We had nothing to do. We made cocktails.

I don't know the last time you sat in a room for eight hours with no lights, no television, no computer, no internet, and just drank and talked. I think it was college for me and there was cocaine involved.

Presumably, the snow also covered the nearby cell tower, rendering it nearly useless, because I normally have a full 3G signal on my iPhone and I was left with barely a cell signal. So even my powerful smart phone was rendered powerless.

So as the light of the day began to fade, so did the batteries in our phones. We were being plunged into darkness with no real connection to the outside world. We had the fire going, which put out just enough heat to keep us from freezing, but not really enough to warm the room and we lit candles which gave us just enough light to not run into things, but not enough to see anything.

At 6pm, Bern announced she had had enough and headed upstairs to bed. I can't remember the last time I went to bed at 6pm. Jane and I were left to drink and stare at each other. Eventually, we decided to argue about something, just to keep it interesting. Then we went to bed. It was 8pm.

I woke at 3am on Sunday morning with lights coming on all around the house. I got up and walked around the house, turning off lights, checking the heat, and running water through the pipes, before going back to bed.

In hindsight, I recommend eating something if you're going to drink for 12-13 hours, because the alternative is waking up with a pretty good hangover. I had been sick for a few days and my back was out from shoveling the weekend before, so when I first woke up I didn't recognize the hangover since I'd felt like shit for at least a week anyway. Eventually, it hit me.

Now it's one thing to wake up the day after a snowstorm with the prospect of digging your way out when you feel good. But if your back is tweaked, and your head won't stop throbbing, it's pretty miserable.

I'm seriously thinking about getting a generator.