What to do when the power's out...

 The power was out for us and millions of others on Tuesday, so I missed my weekly post. It is still out for me as I write this post, but we are living in a world where many of us can still get the Internet on our phones, or drive a little way to find friends with heat, electricity, and running water, so I can NOT complain about having to go five or six days without electricity. So many have it so much worse all the time, and thousands more were dealt a much harsher blow than we were by Hurricane Sandy.


When the power is out, we have to go without heat, lights, television, wireless Internet, and running water.

But from the online conversations in my networks, it seems the most frequent complaint is... boredom.
"What do we do?" seems to be one of the most common refrains, especially after the electricity has been of  for more than a day or two. Just reading these words makes me feel guilty for how much we have, and how much we take for granted. People I know are basically saying, "Oh no, the power's out. I guess I'll have to update Facebook and Twitter using 3G!" This is truly an example of #firstworldproblems.

Despite being a tech savvy person, I have found the shutdown from electricity to be refreshing. It's a return to previous times, to an old world, with different priorities. I love it. Well, I love it for now. Parts of it.


It is COLD at night, but the family is camping out in the same room using our tents, sleeping bags and blankets, we are cooking on the grill, eating food from our camping coolers, and we've got countless gallons of water in containers we filled before the power went out. TIP - filling the bathtub with water prior to a storm is a great move. Grab a bucket and you've got everything you need to flush.

So to my friends who are asking what to do, here are a few things we've come up with so far:

• Exercise - if you belong to a gym, it's a great place to go to warm up and get a shower, but if not, go for a jog or walk around the neighborhood to survey the damage and get the heart rate and body temperature raised.
• Read - it took my eyes a little bit of adjusting to read by candlelight, but only a few minutes passed before I hardly noticed. I've been able to make great progress on my current novel (A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin).
•  Draw pictures - it has been a great pastime for my kids to hone their artistic skills
• Carve pumpkins and tell ghost stories - our particular power outage encompassed Halloween week. Different activities would certainly abound during Thanksgiving, Easter, Christmas, etc.
• Do puzzles
• Play the ORIGINAL Words with Friends - Scrabble! Any board game will do, really. Take turns picking which game to play.
• Grill - cook all the food in your fridge that might spoil and have a big feast. You'll need those extra calories to keep warm, anyway!
• Play hide & seek - this gets even better as it gets darker, though more challenging
• Light candles - your house looks different by candlelight, doesn't it?
• Do yard work - no time like the present to clean up hurricane damage. It will keep you warm, too!
• Do dishes the old-fashioned way - boil some water and pour it in a basin. Some wash, some dry. It takes time, but hey... you've got time to kill, right?
• Tell stories - how many can you remember without Internet access? Don't worry if you're a little rusty!
• Enjoy it - the difference between a catastrophe and an opportunity can be a matter of your state of mind, so find ways to accentuate the positive and make the most of the situation!Stay safe, everyone & take care. See you next week ... possibly by candlelight ... hopefully with electricity.