Oh yeah...
So we were left in the dark on Thursday afternoon. Here's what I wrote on my Palm Pilot on the way home from work on a crowded GO Train...
8/14 5:35pm
Here I sit, on the floor of the stopped train, waiting for permission to cross a busy track crossroad. The power in the toronto area (and everywhere from Markham to Hamilton to Ottawa, all the way to Ohio and New York) has been off since about 4:00.
I was most of the way though an email to Christine when the power shut off at work and the emergency lights came on. Not long after that, the emergency lights gave out due to overheating, which meant that the people left in the building had to walk down a pitch black stairwell, and my building is a good 35 stories at least. Thank goodness we had some extra door prize flashlights from some conference long ago. I was the best friend to a lot of nervous people for a few minutes today.
I was going to visit my mom tonight, but I left the books I bought her behind in the dark. Sunglasses too. Funny how you don't think of those things when you're in a situation where they are profoundly useless.
J is going to try to meet me at the train as soon as he can. he's going to take the 407 home...electronic toll highways become quite the treat with no electricity.
Moving now.
Just talked to Steph. She says it's out in Chicago, and all th way north to Timmins. she says that the guys are joking that terrorists will try to claim responsibility for this too. I was going to head to her place on foot if the trains weren't running, but it's a good thing I didn't, she wasn't home.
Apparently there hasn't been a power outage like this since 1964.
BBQ and candle-lit dinner for us tonight. Thank goodness I finished the milk this morning.
-----------------------
Got home about 45 minutes later than usual, and it turns out my train was the last one I saw come through my station - I must have caught the last one out. Had Dad over that night for the bbq...he brought the texas toast for hamburger buns, and we contributed the hamburger patties. J and I tried to sleep in our room that night, but at about 1:00am we both came downstairs because it was just too damned hot upstairs, even with the windows open. The power came back on at about 5:00am, hooray for air conditioning! Neither of us went to work on Friday, even if my building *was* open, I couldn't get into downtown Toronto because the GO trains weren't running. We enjoyed our day off with Steph and Jeff in the evening, with another bbq and some games (Steph and I rock as a team playing Cranium). The rest of the weekend revolved around being energy efficient - we bought some high-efficiency lightbulbs, and have both discovered that we don't need to keep our computers on 24/7, we really don't. We don't miss it at all, and amazingly our second floor isn't as hot with 3 computers running all the time (only 1 now, and that's our server) - this will probably reduce our air-conditioning costs as well by a bit, it won't have to work as hard to keep our upstairs cool. I think when this electricity emergency is all over, we're going to keep doing pretty much all the efficiency things we're doing now, except we'll do more "life" things again like laundry and cooking with the stove and oven. We already had a programmable thermostat, but we're going to get more efficient lightbulbs and stuff like that. It feels good to be a responsible citizen :).
8/14 5:35pm
Here I sit, on the floor of the stopped train, waiting for permission to cross a busy track crossroad. The power in the toronto area (and everywhere from Markham to Hamilton to Ottawa, all the way to Ohio and New York) has been off since about 4:00.
I was most of the way though an email to Christine when the power shut off at work and the emergency lights came on. Not long after that, the emergency lights gave out due to overheating, which meant that the people left in the building had to walk down a pitch black stairwell, and my building is a good 35 stories at least. Thank goodness we had some extra door prize flashlights from some conference long ago. I was the best friend to a lot of nervous people for a few minutes today.
I was going to visit my mom tonight, but I left the books I bought her behind in the dark. Sunglasses too. Funny how you don't think of those things when you're in a situation where they are profoundly useless.
J is going to try to meet me at the train as soon as he can. he's going to take the 407 home...electronic toll highways become quite the treat with no electricity.
Moving now.
Just talked to Steph. She says it's out in Chicago, and all th way north to Timmins. she says that the guys are joking that terrorists will try to claim responsibility for this too. I was going to head to her place on foot if the trains weren't running, but it's a good thing I didn't, she wasn't home.
Apparently there hasn't been a power outage like this since 1964.
BBQ and candle-lit dinner for us tonight. Thank goodness I finished the milk this morning.
-----------------------
Got home about 45 minutes later than usual, and it turns out my train was the last one I saw come through my station - I must have caught the last one out. Had Dad over that night for the bbq...he brought the texas toast for hamburger buns, and we contributed the hamburger patties. J and I tried to sleep in our room that night, but at about 1:00am we both came downstairs because it was just too damned hot upstairs, even with the windows open. The power came back on at about 5:00am, hooray for air conditioning! Neither of us went to work on Friday, even if my building *was* open, I couldn't get into downtown Toronto because the GO trains weren't running. We enjoyed our day off with Steph and Jeff in the evening, with another bbq and some games (Steph and I rock as a team playing Cranium). The rest of the weekend revolved around being energy efficient - we bought some high-efficiency lightbulbs, and have both discovered that we don't need to keep our computers on 24/7, we really don't. We don't miss it at all, and amazingly our second floor isn't as hot with 3 computers running all the time (only 1 now, and that's our server) - this will probably reduce our air-conditioning costs as well by a bit, it won't have to work as hard to keep our upstairs cool. I think when this electricity emergency is all over, we're going to keep doing pretty much all the efficiency things we're doing now, except we'll do more "life" things again like laundry and cooking with the stove and oven. We already had a programmable thermostat, but we're going to get more efficient lightbulbs and stuff like that. It feels good to be a responsible citizen :).