Interesting fun during a blackout!

[Tilea]

Well my city was one of the cities that got hit by the big power blackout yesterday. It took a couple hours before news filtered in that the area affected was quite massive - large parts of ontario, Detroit, NY city, Ohio.. Washington and on and on. Anyways.. I'm at home thinking.. hmmm.. what's there to do with no power?? It's funny how much you rely on it nowadays.

Anyways, the boyfriend calls (his city is also out) and asks if I want to go for a drive. So we do, and let me tell you its actually VERY cool to be drivining through a busy downtown area with no lights available anywhere. I think every cop was working that night, setting up flares and directing traffic at every big intersection. It was a beautiful night, warm with no wind or anything.. perfect for a blackout! Then we came across a street that has a lot of pubs, and some of them were still open. They had these really cool hawaiin like.. things... burning candles for light. And they had tons of ice keeping their beer cold! Score! So we called some friends and we all got together there. Later we'd all go to a friends house, get candles going and have a barbeque. It was a ton of fun... so I guess not having electricity isn't so bad afterall.

One thing that was the weirdest, is that there were SO many people out that night, walking their pets.. walking with their families etc. I haven't seen that in such a long time. Very nice, actually. :)

Plus work had to close today, so I got a free long weekend!!!

Anyone else affected by the big blackout?

[Forty]

Nope...funny Texas is on it's own power grid. The rest of the US and Canada could go dark but Texas will be shining bright.

[Gemmi]

Our power outage at home was minimal time, althought the city just 10 miles away was out all night.

Generally, when I lose power to the house as happens sometimes, my daughter tends to be the entertainment. She gets her flute and plays, and/or later will read out loud her current book. It's always fun and I like power outages.

[Darsarin]

They had these really cool hawaiin like.. things... burning candles for light

They are called tiki torchs :)

I hope it was not to hot while the power was off. :(

[Lola]

I wish the power had gone out here. Stupid Connecticut though, as to be all on top of things.

The surge/spike at 4 we did experience killed my UPS though!

[Eomer]

Yeah Forty, same thing with Alberta. All of our power is generated locally, and we sell the excess. But pretty sure that if other areas nearby went out, we would still be fine.

It would have been cool to be in NY or wherever else that had the blackout, as long as you weren't stuck in traffic. Would have been a nice view of the stars.

[Tilea]

Originally posted by Darsarin
They are called tiki torchs :)

I hope it was not to hot while the power was off. :(

It's been around 29 or 30 degrees for the last few days here, and will be for a few more. Which I love! But the powerout really only affected late afternoon and the night, so having no AC wasn't a big deal. Plus my bedroom is in the basement :)

[Zeldapika]

We had to blackouts today (fri) that we non-related to the ones in ny, canada, etc. I got to not do anything but make lemonade at work for like 3 hours! hehe

I love how people come up ad assume we are the only place on the boardwalk with power...

"hi can i have some fried shrimp?"
"no, sorry, our power/friers are out"
" oh, then can i have some fried calamari?"
"...."


Made some interesting jokes at least

[Lola]

ZP, can I have some fried mozzarella? Yum.

[Myztlee]

As per my other post, yeah, that power outage was exactly what I needed.

I'd been cleaning my apartment for the past few days, so when the power went out, I just kept going until it got too hot, but that passed the time until dinner.

Then I sat on my deck for a couple hours as the sun went down, reading a book, when it started getting darker, I just sat there watching the stars come out like I haven't seen since being at the cottage, stars this city sky hasn't seen in 40 years since the last big crash. It was also a meteor shower last night, I lost count of how many shooting stars I saw, a couple were very spectacular, one left a streak of light behind it that lasted a second or two after it was gone. It was very calming, sipping wine until the moon came up and washed out the show.

Managed to defrost the freezer, which was something I was going to do anyway...

Spent most of today just reading, finishing cleaning up, and reading some more. Forgotten how good books can be. and how used I was to just having the TV/PC on all the time. I think I'll be spending a lot more time with books again like I used to.

But I will say from around 1pm to 4pm, it was starting to get pretty thick in here. I hadn't had much to eat, and the heat/humidity was sucking the remaining energy right out of me. I couldn't go out on my deck as it was directly in the sun and way too hot, tried lying down inside, was still stifling, was sort of in a snooze/daze for the last 2 hours when clickbzzt the TV started to power up, and the room fans started to spin. Yay!

Almost 24 hours exactly without power - they say there's a chance they'll rotate blackouts through the night/day tomorrow, but so far, it's been on here since. While it was nice not having the power, being in the city does require it. Still, I'm very glad it happened. I was tempted to go downtown just to see what Toronto would be like completely shut down. People I spoke to said it was pretty neat, some people were helping direct traffic through intersections, some bars were open, the streetcars abandoned in the middle of the road. I would have gone, if not for the stargazing, that and I thought well, if everyone else goes, 5 million people is going to be pretty crowded, and if nobody else goes, I'm a nice target for a mugging. Still, only about 40 arrests for looting and such from what I read, was pretty tame.

Anyway, it was something to experience, I'm glad I was a part of it.

[Illegal]

well, my part of toronto was out for 13 hours :( lights out at 4:14pm, lights on sometime past 5am the next day. Passing the time was easy though, I just slept. But when we thought everything was mostly back to normal, just to make things more interesting, at about 3pm lights out again. Turns out a cable burned out at Yonge & Eglinton ( that's two blocks from my place ), huge fire, takes the firefighters over an hour to clean it up, and another 3 hours to get the power back up and running. Every day since, the elevators in my building have been on and off. I went down to the basement with two and a half tons of laundry yesterday, ended up having to haul the finished product up 11 flights of stairs =/

[Myztlee]

You're lucky your power wasn't off longer - I know some people in highrises who had no power for well into the Friday and they had no water, the pressure couldn't get up to them anymore.

And the guy on the first floor, friend of his was 3 months pregnant, left work, got on the subway, got 80 feet into the tunnel and the power went out. They sat there for 2 hours before they were finally allowed out, and by then everyone was freaking out - they had no access to the news or anything, for all they knew the bombs were falling.

She walked block after block, no busses or taxis, in high heels. Then she took them off and continued for more blocks barefoot. Eventually she caught a cab, but it made me appreciate that the worst I had was it was hot, and I had to throw out some food.

Oh, ha, there was a really lovely unexpected side effect - so many people threw out their milk. Like, into the garbage. Instead of down the drain.

The roads are all a huge slick of spoiled milk that's seeping out of garbage cans and garbage trucks. Every gutter is a pool of rotting milk. The roads are soaked in places. And there's no rain forcast until Friday. Just another fragrance in the bouquet known as Toronto.

[Buazag Bonesteel]

Originally posted by Myztlee
Oh, ha, there was a really lovely unexpected side effect - so many people threw out their milk. Like, into the garbage. Instead of down the drain.

What a huge collection of colossal dumbasses :rolleyes:

[Andriana Duskrose]

Plus my bedroom is in the basement

Is Pee Wee Herman's bicycle down there?