Last night was really interesting, due to a crazy thunderstorm that raged through Western Mass right as I was leaving work. Dave and I walked to our cars and we just missed the rain starting. Driving home, I witnessed some crazy lightning and torrential downpours, but it didn’t seem like that bad of a storm. I was wrong.

At home, things were crazy as usual as Sara came by and the rest of us tried to figure out dinner plans. That’s when the power went out. We were all annoyed but hopeful that it would turn back on again soon. Pete and Sara left for the mall, but quickly called us to say that they passed 3 trees that fell on one street. One had fallen on the powerlines and was the cause of the power outage. We got dinner at Subway, and I called Dave to bitch about the heat. We made tentative plans to watch a movie at his house rather than mine, which was the initial plan, but it was all dependent on whether his brother was home or not. So I took a shower and tried to read in the meantime, but ended up napping. The power was still out at this point, so when Dave came over, we ended up driving around aimlessly with Andrew. We took Dave’s laptop so that we could see what wireless networks we could pick up, which was fun just to see what people name their networks. (The winner: “GetYourOwnNetwork”) Sounds lame and dorky, but that’s us!

On the way back to my house, we see the police have blocked off the area by the fallen tree but no one is working on its removal. We hang around in the dark talking with Pete and Andrew, and then Dave and I went to get some food. By this time the tree was gone and Comcast was working on the power lines further down the street. I asked one of the workers what the prognosis was, but he looked really confused and we just kept driving by anyways. It was so surreal driving around my neighborhood in complete darkness. Driving through Chicopee on the way to Dave’s to pick something up, we could tell where the town lines were, because Springfield houses were dark and Chicopee’s were blazing. Jerks.

After eating, Dave and I tried to watch The Aristocrats on his laptop, but the extra battery took up the CD drive so we thought we were stuck. Then I remembered that I still had Auntie Carol’s portable DVD player so we were able to watch the movie after all. It was so unbearable just laying there watching the movie together because it was so hot and muggy. I was working up a sweat doing nothing. After Dave left, I tried desperately to fall asleep but it was so hard. I must have eventually dozed off, because then I woke up at 3:50 AM when the power came back on. My printer started to make a lot of noise, then my AC was blasting. It was such a welcome relief.

I’m pretty well-rested considering, but man, it’s going to be awhile before I take power for granted again. It was fun at first, the whole house lit only by candles and going outside to complete darkness, but trying to sleep in those conditions are awful. Hopefully we’re spared from a power outage like that for awhile.