How Stella got her power back...

Hey all,

It's been a while, but I'm back on the blog scene.

I can see the t-shirts being printed in Ann Arbor now - "I survived the blackout of 2003." Love those guys. The ones that had a t-shirt printed out for every occasion and were always trying to hock them in front of the Union.

Anyway, so I guess I'll start with the rest of the week, then go onto the Bo2k3 (Blackout of 2003).

To be honest, I don't remember that much about the rest of the week since Tuesday. Was I that traumatized by the Bo2k3? Perhaps. I remember thinking that it was a pretty easygoing week, but to be honest, I can't really back that up either way.

I forgot my pedometer on Thursday, so I have no readings.

Friday was a wash too.

Saturday I walked my ass off. But we'll get to that later. I'm going to take the 16k from Saturday and average it over Fri and and Sat.

OK, so Thursday. When it all started.

Around 4:15 or so (somewhere in the ballpark of) the lights flickered, and shut off. It was odd. The monitor flickered, but stayed on. The computer never skpped a beat. So I was a good citizen and kept working. Come on, I had stuff to do. :)

A few minutes later, all was lost when everything went dark, and the emergency lights went on. Huh. Laptop was fine, as it kept chugging along cause it had it's battery groove on. A slight minor inconvenience was that I couldn't get the LCD panel back on, but whatever. Everyone was kind of confused, as it wasn't raining, the weather was beautiful, etc.

We thought we'd be good citizens of the Man, and see if we could just wait it out to see if the power outage was temporary or not. Once we did our due diligence of waiting, we decided to get the hell out of dodge. As we were walking out of the building, one of Brizzai's friends told him that a lot of the East coast had gotten hit too. As much as I hate to say it, we had thought it was some terrorism shite going on. (It really bothers me that terrorism was the first thing that I thought of. How times have changed.) I just wanted to get home.

The drive home was painful... The four-way stop action was slowly draining my will to live. Luckily, I was spared the excitement of the gridlock that other intersections experienced.

After the power outage, out of my 6 radio presets, only 2 stations were broadcasting. Nice. My celly only worked about 10% of the time I tried to use it. I was able to call my brother in MA, and he had told me that he wasn't affected. He was still working :)

Fast forward to home. That's when the major suckage of no electricity began. As an added bonus, the water pressure was steadily decreasing every hour.

During the outage, I had no idea what to do. Everything I usually do requires good ol' electricity. Grr.

I even resorted to reading an old magazine Steve had given me. :) Shen I was done, I started reading old car magazines my brother had given me in March of 2002. You getting the drift of how ofen I actually read? ;) I was reading about the upcoming cars of 2003. Wow, that's really cool :)

So let's see what did I end up doing? I listened to the radio a lot. Talked on the phone a little. Took naps. Talked to my parents (briefly).

That's pretty much it. That's all I did. It was just so hot, and everything seemed to require effort and energy that I didn't have.

I think Friday was the most painful. I was so bored I was going to cry.

I kept on listening to the AM new station. Again, another thing that I rarely do. I think I listened to more AM radio during Thursday and Friday then I ever have my whole life.

I was trying to listen to the news of what communities were getting power, hoping that we'd be next.

Alas, the magical power did not return until Saturday morning, at 1:30 a.m. It seemed like all the cities around us were getting power. But we were the city that was getting neglected. A bunch of my friends in neighbouring cities had gotten power, so I was totally jealous.

After going to the house in the city to unplug the appliances, I had noticed that the Target nearby was open, so I thought I'd go and check things out. It was the weirdest thing. It was like business as usual at Target, but just with 10 percent of the lights :) I felt like a priviledged shopper, being able to buy before the store officialy opened. Or shopping "after hours." Wacky stuff, I tell you. People were shopping for clothes, food, just like it was a regular day. Just an odd experience, to say the least.

So let's see, a few lessons learned from this ordeal:
-Fill up with gas once the tank gets to about 1/2 to 1/3 full.
-Always have bottled water on hand. After all you never know when a rave will start. :)
-Canned Spaghetti O's cold are really not that bad.
-I need new hobbies that don't rely on electricity (other than reading, of course)

Fast forward to Saturday - Things were much better.things were a tad more normal. Saturday was the Woodward Dream Cruise/Parking Lot.

Drew had drven up from Ann Arbor, and we attended the event. The cool thing was that we actually participated in the cruise/parking lot with his car :) We were dwarfed by the heftier american muscle cars, but we had fun anyway. The import cars were representing, but totally outnumbered and out-noised by the American cars. Oh well.

We walked around quite a bit, and drove a while. Saw some cool cars. A few highlights:

A parked red NSX. We were unable to locate the owner, but we definitely did our share of checking out the ride.

We saw a yellow Lamborghini Diablo parked and as the driver drove away. The sounds from the 12 cylinder engine was music to our ears.

Finally, we saw a red 91 Ferrari 348 TS. Talked to the owner a bit, checked out his car, etc. And as he drove away, Drew and I shed a tear - The engine sound was like the most beautiful symphony in the word. :) Loved it.

I must have gotten a little dehydrated yesterday from walking around. I don't feel as well today.

-Kirk