After sitting there for about 10 minutes, I suddenly realized that I couldn't hear the soothing hum of the air conditioner. And with the temperature hovering right around 100 degrees, that was a VERY bad thing! It then hit me that everything was off-- clocks, refrigerator, everything. It was so quiet without that constant electrical buzz we're so accustomed to!
Anyhow... Our next-door neighbor knocked on the door shortly thereafter to say that they had lost power. I started seeing other neighbors walk out into their driveways, as well, so I knew it was not just our house, at least! I made an executive decision to load the kids up in the car and head for the store. I figured that a store on the complete opposite side of town would SURELY have power. Right?
Wrong. I realized the outage was a little more widespread when all the stoplights were blinking red (and some were out completely). It took me three times as long as it should have to get across town, and then the store was dark. People were milling around the exit looking confused. Meanwhile, while all this was going on, I had been trying and trying to get through to Gus and my parents on my cell phone. I finally got through to my parents, who looked it up on the computer and informed me that at least 1.4 million customers were without power, starting in northern parts of Mexico, extending all the way up into southern Orange County, and going from the coast all the way to Yuma, Arizona. Basically, the southernmost chunk of the state was in a complete blackout!
Thankfully, my parents weren't affected (nor were Gus' parents)... but right then and there, I decided to hop on the freeway and drive up to my parents' house for the afternoon/evening. At the very least, we'd be able to feed the kids a decent dinner. At home, I didn't want anyone to open the refrigerator/freezer at all to (hopefully) keep the food from going bad. It was also nice to be able to watch the news coverage, look up information on the internet, etc.
Anyway... We drove back home at around 8pm, since the kids didn't have any of their lovies and wouldn't have slept well without them. After all, our original plan had just been to go to the store for an hour... it wasn't meant to become an overnight trip! So, we drove home. It was kind of a surreal experience! All the well-lit downtown areas were pitch black and completely lifeless. The stars were amazing, because there were no city lights to wash them out! Once we turned into our neighborhood, we saw that there were TONS of people outside, sitting in their driveways around fire pits, lanterns, etc. It ended up being this really neat sort of community-bonding thing! Even on the road, people were driving very slowly and carefully, stopping completely at all the dark traffic lights. Amazing!
At any rate... the County Superintendent of Schools announced that all public schools in the county would be closed today, though I only heard this "through the grapevine" and couldn't find anything out about my specific school district. Plus, the power finally came back on at 2am, so I wasn't sure if the plan had changed. I still figured we'd probably be closed today, but decided it was better to be safe than sorry. I drove to my school first thing this morning, and was greeted by this lovely sight:
(that's my principal by the way, hehe! I took this with my cell phone so I could send it to a few of my coworkers as evidence.) Three words: Three day weekend!!! And we had power, so I've used today to deep-clean the house so I can enjoy the next two days without worrying about chores. So exciting! Yippee! (and yay for power, too!) :)
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