Power Outage

My power was out last night. Actually, it was a whole lot more than my power. At about 10:30 (I worked until 11), my buddy from the same apartment complex called me to let me know that the power was out in our whole area. A few minutes later, the lady who works at the front of the store came by and mentioned that the whole strip mall I live behind was out of power, in addition to a few stoplights. "People gotta rely on the courtesy of others out there. I nearly died."

When my shift ended and I was able to survey the lightlessness situation and, sure enough, the lights were off in the strip mall; with the notable exception of Walmart. Thankfully, the street lights were back up, so I did not have to rely on others being friendly. I cursed that any night in which the area lights were out was undoubtedly a cloudy night, meaning I could not gaze up at the stars and pretend I wanted to do this all the time.

I scooped up my aforementioned electronically-stranded buddy and we hit the nearby bar we frequent because they have $5 pizzas in the evenings. Shooting the shit until one o'clock, when the bar closed, to kill some time because no one under the age of 30 gets tired before 2 am; at least, no one I would hang out with. You know, since I work until 11 and all. Plus, they're squares.

Eventually, the surly bartended gave us the boot and we prayed in vain to pagan gods we were sure were dead that our electricity would be restored but, alas, the area was still shrouded in darkness. It was deeply terrifying, in a way: all that mankind can do can be shattered by nature and rendered inoperable, and worse boring. Darkened, abandoned buildings is how I've always envisioned the world after it ends. I had to suppress a very strong urge to begin looting.

Upon returning home, I lurked for a while before brushing my teeth in total darkness and otherwise preparing for bed. Then, as I was still not tired enough, I did some exercising. Seriously, there's just nothing to fucking do in pitch blackness at 1:30am in Indianapolis.

Then, right as I was realizing that working out and not having any AC was a terrible combination, the power was restored. I crouched in the darkness for a few more minutes, listening to the renewed beepings and whirrings, distrustful, assuming that someone was trying to lure me into a trap. When I finally accepted this new reality, which was really just a restoration of my old reality, I check my email and went to bed. Since I was tired.