Tuesday, September 13, 2011

The Great SD Blackout of 2011

Last Thursday, September 8th, the power went off at our house around 3:30pm. CJ had just gotten up from his nap, and our planned afternoon activity was going to the mall. So I figured we would still head up there, because they'd probably have power and then they'd have the power back on before we got home. I tried to make a couple of phone calls but had no service. I thought that was kinda weird, and texted JT "no power, no cell service" and headed to the mall. I got CJ unloaded from the car, and loaded into the stroller, walked up to the door and the mall was closed. The security guard told me that there was no power in the WHOLE CITY of San Diego. I thought that was weird, but also a little unnerving considering the close proximity of the date to September 11 as well as the no cell service situation. We headed home and got out our weather radio.
When we lived in Hawaii, there was an earthquake that caused us to lose power for 18 hours, and after being "in the dark" (ha ha!) with what was happening, my mom got us a weather radio that year for Christmas. We used it in Michigan when we would camp out in the basement for tornadoes, and it came in handy once again here! The man giving the press conference announced that there was "no indication that this was terrorist related" and that we would likely be without power for "an extended period". So I gathered up all our candles and flashlights from around the house in preparation.
Meanwhile, I was texting trying to get a hold of JT who was on his way home. I was SOOO glad when he got home because as you can imagine the traffic in SD got even worse than usual without any power to the stoplights.
We grilled out on our patio for dinner and enjoyed a "technology free" evening!
Playing scrabble "the old fashioned way" by candlelight with wine. (JT beat me by 4 points!!)
After he blew out the candles outside, wearing his light-up baseball cap that his dad gave him! That also came in super handy!! Thanks Dad-2! :)
Power was restored to us around 1am, which I thought was pretty good considering the large area that was affected: Parts of Orange County, all of San Diego County, and into Mexico and Arizona!! We had such a fun night we are going to do "game night" once a week, and the best part of the great blackout was that JT got Friday off work!! :)

3 comments:

Sue said...

I have always believed that if you look hard enough there lies the good out of the bad. See you rediscovered "playing games" and enjoyed it so much you will leave technology for one night a week and go back to the "good ole days." You can't beat grill and its low in fat..too.

Jennifer Owens said...

So glad you made the best of your power outage. I'm not so sure I would have had such a great attitude. (o:

Ashley said...

Rach told me about this. So crazy! It would have scared me half to death. But it sounds like y'all had a really fun night!