Adventure: Columbus
So, on Sunday my amazing painting crew (aka, David, Bryan, and Beth) came over to help me paint two rooms in my apartment -- the kitchen is now a lovely terra cotta kind of color, and living room is a color called 'canteen' (kind of an olive green, but not so dark). We had almost finished the kitchen at 4pm when the power went out.
It is still not back on, and may not be until Wednesday night, which puts me in common with about half of Franklin County. (1.92 million households statewide, I read yesterday, though some percentage of that was fixed overnight). A remnant of Hurricane Ike blew through Columbus, bringing high sustained winds and then gusts of winds that were 70+ mph. TONS of trees are down, and I read yesterday that 1/3 of the street lights in Ohio are out. Ohio was declared as a state of emergency by the governor. Ultimately I'm fine -- the lack of power is annoying, but no trees fell on my house/car/body -- so it's just a matter of annoyance. But it has led to a few interesting things:
- painting the entire living room in only the late afternoon / early evening natural light ("does anyone remember painting a second coat here?").
- The fact that about half of the restaurants (along with half of the households) around here are out of power has created HUGE rushes as those places that are open. Sunday night we skipped the massive line at El Vaquero and went to Don Pablos instead. They said the wait was 45 minutes (at, like, 8pm on a Sunday night), but it went quicker. But then they ran out of chips! At least they didn't charge us for the queso...
- When I went to lunch at school yesterday (which is open and operating ... though it's about the only local school doing so), there was a sign on the door at Chipotle that said, "Why Can't I Have My Damned Burrito?" Underneath a picture of a burrito was a smaller font explaining, "Sorry for the inconvenience. This location will reopen when power is restored." Meanwhile, a classmate told me that Panera was selling food, but you had to leave to eat it, since they were at capacity.
- Target was out of flashlights and C and D batteries, and most of the cheaper candles. I added a Glade flameless candle, a few refills for another candle product, and one more regular candle to my collection. They were also out of matches, but I scored some cigarette lighters.
- My biggest coup: finding a novelty flashlight at Barnes & Noble's dorm supplies section. It is shaped like a pg, but it doesn't require batteries! (See above. Seriously.)
- Last night I was going to go to Beth's house to watch "Firefly" (since she has power, but no cable/internet, and I have the Firefly DVDs in Angela's collection...and no power). But I realized that disc 1 was in my DVD player from a time we had almost watched it and opted out. No power = couldn't remove the DVD. So I unplugged the whole thing and brought the DVD player to Beth's instead.
Now I'm at school, charging my computer and phone (and waiting for class to start, though there have been a lot of cancellations of individual classes). Then I'll ... uh ... hang out here more....