December 11, 2001

As Californian, you'd think I'd be used to power outages by now.

Not so. When an outage zapped my system yesterday and left me standing wrapped in darkness and without the comforting hum of my computer, I found myself abruptly most utterly lost.

A long blog rant had just vanished into thin air, the words I had so carefully extracted cruelly extinguished in less than a blink of the eye.
My freezer was defrosting its contents by the minute, and I could almost hear my stash of ice cream scream in terror.
All the lightbulbs in all the rooms seemed to have grown eyes, dull blank ones, and were staring at me mockingly.
The phone was disturbingly quiet and appeared to sneer at me with a sardonic grin.

For a few mintues, I had a claustrophobically orwellian notion of what it must be like to live in a completely wired dwelling. Not even being able to open the front door and exit one's own house at will. Being completely reliant on some corrupt and diabolically monopolistic power company to fix the problem so one can continue on with life as usual.

I wanted to instantly pack my bags and move to some godforsaken lake in Canada somewhere - where I could live in a nice low-tech log house on the water, eat berries and fish all day, and read Jack London or H.D. Thoreau by candle light.

Of course then the power came back on, signaled by a low thump of the stereo system's subwoofer. My fridge casually sprang to life again with its trusted noises, the lightbulbs had lost their dead eyes and were glowing now with reassuring warmth, and the phone was blinking cheerfully to let me know that I needed to rerecord my outgoing message.

Never mind all that log house crap. I'm staying right here.