Blackout!
Well, that was fun. Or at least interesting. I was in Detroit when the power went out — gee, didn’t I just pick the best day to go into work? Anyway, the lights started flickering crazily, so I unplugged my laptop, but otherwise ignored it. A little later the lights came back on and my work desktop started booting up again. Partway through the boot, the lights went nuts again, and this time they stayed off. They started evacuating the building, so we all had to climb down tons of stairs (20 floors in my case.) Along the way we ran into a guy whose keys were stuck on the other side of the building who was trying to go down and over and then back up so he could get to them (I think he managed to find his way), and we also learned there was someone stuck in one of the elevators. By the time we reached the 11th floor, where the stuck person was, some building people were there. I guess they eventually managed to get the person out, which was good. Anyway, we went all the way down the stairs, and then I got to stand around while the “Disaster Planning Team” had a meeting. Some guy from the Detroit Free Press came and took a whole bunch of pictures of us and wrote down all our names, so maybe my picture got in the paper. I don’t know because I didn’t actually get a copy of the Free Press. Anyway, we waited there until around 7:00 (the power outage came not long after 4:00), waiting for the traffic to clear and stuff. A couple of the guys were nice enough to climb back up the stairs to get drinks for all of us (though I had already grabbed some Sprite on the 19th floor.) Anyway, once we finally left Detroit the highway had cleared enough that we had no problems on the way home. Me and Dan sat around reading and doing a crossword puzzle and stuff by candlelight last night. I had to eat a bagel with peanut butter for dinner because it was the only thing we had in the house. It was really, really quiet without any of the computers or anything making noise. It was also really hot, so we slept downstairs on the floor because it was cooler than the bedroom. We still didn’t have power this morning, but my parents did, so we went over there for a while. Part of downtown also had power by the time we went over there, so Dan was able to get his coffee from Espresso Royalle. Anyway, we have power again now, so I can do everything I couldn’t before, like get email (though I don’t actually have any.)
Here’s a couple of the pictures I took in Detroit of everyone standing around outside the building and stuff.
Disaster Team meeting:
Traffic and blank streetlights:
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