Thursday, July 20, 2006

I survived the longest power outage

Our power was out from 10:58 pm on Tuesday to 7:58 pm on Wednesday. It was interesting. Lots of people seemed to be out just driving around in their big air-conditioned cars/trucks or whatever you wanna call them. Elysha had to go in for some blood tests in nearby Montclair and the trees there were mostly in the curbs or on lawns. There were cops everywhere , parked across streets to block them or (in "Upper" Montclair) directing traffic away from said streets. We drove around trying to get to the McDonald's in Montclair and wound up in Bloomfield at a McDonald's just off the Garden State Parkway - there the GSP trucks had the drive-thru blocked off... We're still not sure why, but they were in there having lunch. Grrrrrr....Going through Bloomfield to get home was not bad - not much down there. In Verona, there were no handy cops out directing traffic, even though several significant traffic lights were out on Pompton Avenue/Route 23. And we don't even have a doughnut shop here in Verona.... I had been called to come in to work at the library, but the director called just before I was going to leave and said to forget it - they lost all power. They'd been running on half power most of the day, with no internet access (that must've irritated our most frequent patrons) and no air-conditioning. They had jerry-rigged a power line for the circulation desk charging computers, but when the power went, no lights either, so he shut the place down at 1pm. Interesting day... I'd give a link to news reports, but apparently it wasn't a big deal to them. Guess the power didn't go out in Newark....

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