Who turned off the lights??

Good thing I'm not scared of the dark!

We experienced a little blackout the other day...and when I say little, I mean GINORMOUS! We're talkin power lost for about 5 MILLION people, throughout parts of Arizona, Southern California and parts of Baja Cali (Mexico). That is a LOT of people just sitting around, doin a whole lot of nothing. This went on for quite some time too... from around 3:30pm on Wednesday (9/7) afternoon, til 1:30am on Thurs (9/8) early morning.

Craziness. This is now known as the "Great San Diego Black-Out of 2011" - hilarious.

Normal SD scene vs. Blackout SD scene

And of course it had to be on a pretty hot day. Lovely. I had just picked up Kapri from preschool...she was drenched in sweat, miserable, crying & just wanted mamma. I got back to the car to find 2 texts, that I couldn't reply to...as they wouldn't go through. I tried to dial out, numerous times over the 5 minute drive home...nada.

I finally got home, yep, it's confirmed...garage door won't open "power is definitely out", I thought to myself. This ought to be fun. (yeah right). How the heck do you explain to a 2 yr old that we can't watch Curious George or Toy Story because the 'power is out'?? haha...then once James fought insane traffic & finally got home, we ended up having my sisters over for the evening and sat around staring at each other, chatting & having a cold 'adult' beverage or 2, while K enjoyed playing with us by candlelight...until our phones started to die. So around 8pm, when James got K ready for bed, my sisters & I decided to jump in the car for a bit so we could all charge our phones. We drove around in COMPLETE darkness for 45 minutes, just amazed at how dead the city was. No street lights, no parking lot or business lights - it was very surreal. Much darker than that pic above even, since we're in North County SD. We did end up going to an open liquor store, who helped us shop by flashlight...and took our cash for another small case of cold drinks ;-)

There was a common theme all over Facebook (our only means of communication & info updates since phone lines were totally blocked) - people drinking with their friends, getting to know the neighbors & bbq'ing what they could from their slowly defrosting fridges. Pretty sure that's what 75% of people in the entire black out zone were doing, all at the same time.

On our way to bed around 11pm, we noticed (on FB!) that more & more people were starting to get their power back. We decided to leave a light on & plug in our phones to the chargers/dock, so that we'd know when (if) the power turned back on - luckily it did. It was quite an experience. Having never been in that situation before...it definitely makes you appreciate energy in a whole new way, when you realize how much really depends on it.

I LOVE LIGHTS!!! hahaha