Late post today, because my dearest mumsy and stepdad drove up from DC to feed me and buy me things, which is the job of all parental units whenever they come to visit. Particularly if they're visiting during Homecoming/Parent's Weekend—I mean, yes, it's partially named after them, but somehow we students end up reaping the rewards.
Unless the parental units consider it enough of a reward just to spend time with us, but that doesn't sound very likely, does it?
Anyway, as you've no doubt learned already if you've read the entries of my delightful co-bloggers, this week the power dramatically went out! (exclamation point for dramatic emphasis) at about 12:15 am on Sunday, in the midst of some Halloweekend celebrations—and, of course, like the mature young adults we all are here at Wes, we handled the situation with dignity, aplomb, and just the slightest bit of panic.
[Below the cut: yet another recap of the blackout, if you're not too bored of that yet; also some musings about the rest of the week, pre-reg, and Parent's Weekend.]
It hadn't been a particularly eventful night prior to the blackout, I must admit; I'd played in the snow earlier in the day:
but other than that, pretty much the only time I really left my room was when I pulled together a quick Christmas tree costume to go participate in some Halloweekend karaoke down the hall. Which was fun, until the dulcet strains of "Margaritaville" began to play and I decided it was a propitious time to flee. (We all have lines we draw in the sand, okay. Jimmy Buffett is mine.)
I spent the rest of my evening communing with the internet and whichever friends, in whatever state, decided to accost me. And then—proving my friend Kristen's dire forebodings correct—the overhead lights flickered and died, the glow on my charger disappeared, and the green numbers on my clock winked out, leaving me lightless, chargeless, and timeless.
"Shit," thought I. "Our power's gone."
After that, there was pretty much nothing to do but migrate into the hallway, where the emergency lights had whined into life (HI-RISE, I LOVE YOU), and sit and chat aimlessly with everybody else who had had the same idea. Which I guess is probably a sign that the universe wants me to be social or something. Who knows.
Me, on Sunday upon waking: "Still out?"
My flatmate: "Still out."
And lo, so it was. We feasted upon dry cereal and other such foodstuffs, and awkwardly waited until 2 to go connect with our ancestors who lived through the Great Depression by waiting in line to collect free food from Usdan. Well, when I say 2 I mean 1:30, because we knew that the most of the entire school would soon be showing up in search of victuals. And sure enough, by the time we got our food, the line was stretching all the way to the '92. In pictorial form, for those unfamiliar with Wesleyan geography:
Also, we were stunned along the way by the sheer devastation done to College Row by the storm, which had apparently decided to engage in a massive smackdown with ALL OF THE TREES EVER.
After that we ventured to Exley, chasing the rumor that SciLi had power to its outlets so we could recharge our various electronics—a rumor that, unfortunately, turned out to be founded solely on vicious, vicious falsehood. (We, by the way, is me, Flatmate Katie, and our two across-the-hall neighbors.)
My cellphone died, with one last pathetic beep to tell me that it was turning itself off in a desperate act of electronic self-preservation. Home Depot had flashlights for Flatmate Katie, but no camp stove for Delightful Neighbors; Price Chopper, thankfully, had bread, peanut butter, and cold soup for all. After that, it was back to Hi-Rise to take advantage of the last few rays of natural light.
Twice, I almost pressed the button for the elevator before catching myself. These things seem to work themselves into your muscle memory.
I'm not unused to power outages, and I'd even managed to finish most of my homework, so it wasn't too horrible, even though I was down to fourteen measly minutes of battery life on my laptop. Mostly it was just irritating—and a little lonely, despite the fact that I was spending most of my time with Flatmate Katie and Delightful Neighbors. I had friends elsewhere on campus and I had no idea how they were doing. I could have gone out and looked for them, but I ran the risk of missing them because they were out and I couldn't call them. I was chatting online with a friend when the power blew, and I couldn't email her to apologize for the abrupt cut-off of our conversation. I had to borrow a friend's phone just to text my mom to tell her that I was okay.
My world had suddenly contracted to my hallway—particularly my apartment and the apartment across the hall. My reading supply dwindled to just the books I have on my shelves. People can say all they want about my generation's unhealthy addiction to technology, but it's a way to connect, and the sudden disruption of that made me feel a little unmoored. (Also bored. Seriously, what do we do with ourselves without lolcats?) More than a few of my friends fled Wes like a sinking ship, driving to Boston, or Maine, or NYC—anywhere that had power and wasn't a college campus suspended in time.
And then, you know, power came back on at 10 pm on Monday, in the middle of a game of Monopoly. Exciting stuff!
Well, not everyone on campus got power, but I had my internet back, which meant I quite honestly didn't care about anyone else. I'm selfish like that. (No, I kid. We had a program housing refugee stay with us on Tuesday night, because she would rather sleep on my carpet than go back to a freezing cold house.)
I will say this much about the blackout: at least now we have a much more interesting conversation starter than just, "So how's pre-reg going for you?" which is pretty much all we would have been talking about otherwise. Yes, that's right, pre-registration for next semester's classes has begun. I'm tempted to say that it's so much worse this year than it was last semester, but I have access to my blog entries from the spring. I was just as stressed about pre-reg back then as I am now. Hopefully I'll end up as happy with my classes.
Other than that? Well, I made a chocolate cake on Wednesday for the birthday of one of my Delightful Neighbors, and we watched The Devil Wears Prada in class; Thursday was business as usual, and then on Friday I spent about two hours cleaning my apartment in preparation for the arrival of my mom and my stepdad. Yay, motivation!
And oh man, they took me to get awesome food. Forbidden City Bistro on Friday night, and a New Haven restaurant called Geronimo on Saturday—and, of course, the requisite shopping trips to A Dong, the hilariously-named Asian grocery, and Target for various things I either used to own but which somehow disappeared between May and September, or never needed before this year. I have done nothing productive today except get my mother to contribute to the local economy.
I like having my parental units visit, but it's always a bit odd; home life and college life can seem like such different worlds at times that the collision is just plain bizarre. Still, I guess we all need an infusion of the bizarre sometimes. Otherwise, would you guys bother reading my ridiculous ramblings?
Until next week, my pretties. Stay warm!
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