Waiting for the Light

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, we had a power outage last Thursday that blacked out all of San Diego, parts of Orange County, Arizona and Mexico.  It began at around 3:45 pm and lasted until around 9:30 pm.  This was the longest blackout I had ever experienced.  The ironic thing about it was I had been watching the “Friends” marathon on “Nick at Night” recently and saw the episode called The One With the Blackout.  I recall thinking that I couldn’t remember the last time we had experienced a blackout like that.

We realized how unprepared we were for a blackout.  But I must say, where we lacked in flashlights (we had only two), we scored big with dozens of decorative candles throughout the house.  We definitely had to get creative, placing tea lights in bowls and taller candles in cups with water to ensure we were using them safely.  And thank God for Yankee candles!  Not only are they wonderful smelling and pretty, but very useful, too.

This was Dominic’s first time experiencing a blackout.  He couldn’t understand why we kept lighting candles, why none of the lights or fans were working, and why he couldn’t watch television (he said “Mama, put batteries in TV!”).  Eventually he started to have fun, checking out all of the flickering candle flames and playing with the flashlight.

We were sad because we couldn’t watch the very first game of the official football season, and due to the downed power, we couldn’t even check the internet on our phones for scores.  The reason we had news coverage was because my mom found an old radio that you can hand crank for power in case of emergency.  Once it hit 7:00 pm, we decided that it was going to be a very long night and reports on the radio stated that power may be out all the way until Saturday.  

We sporadically were able to send text messages, finding out if we had to go into the office and checking on friends and relatives to see if everyone was ok.  After an hour or two of intermittent phone usage, my texts started to go through immediately.  We heard that power had come back to Orange County, Mexico, and National City.  Then with a strange powering up sound, all of the lights and the fans in the house suddenly came on. We started to receive and place phone calls, hearing that everyone was fine.  It was an unexpectedly eventful evening, and here’s to hoping for an uneventful and easier weekend!