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In case you’ve been wondering, there is a good reason I haven’t posted in a few days.

On Monday evening there was a mighty storm. We sat playing video games as the rain began to pour, and the lightning began to flash. After a few particularly windy moments, the power went out. Our game was put to an end, and we sat chatting in the darkness, hunting down candles for illumination. After a few minutes, power was restored. Thinking things were done, we continued with our business. After another 10 minutes or so, power went out again. But instead of coming back on, it stayed out.

This became problematic, because Dennis was moving to Colorado on Wednesday, and had been staying with us. Now he was faced with the task of moving all of his stuff out of our house, doing his laundry, etc, all without electrictity. We ate what we could of the perishable foods, sat around without shirts on to mitigate the heat, and we wondered when we’d have electricity.

On Wednesday morning, Dennis, Madalene and Barb all drove to Colorado, leaving me to fend for myself. I began to feel like a post-apocolyptic neanderthal, a trogolodyte who had stumbled upon the abandoned shell of a previous generation. Nothing worked, it was perpetual twilight, and all of my eating happened over a small backpacking stove in the yard. I squatted in the house, nervously peering over my shoulder while raiding the cabinets for bags of unspoiled food, haunted by the ghosts of forgotten memories. I didn’t really live there, I was just sleeping in someone elses abandoned home.

Finally on Thursday evening, power was restored. At first there was a bit of a culture shock as the building came alive. The tomb-like silence was broken by the whirr of computer fans, air conditioners and refridgerator compressors. It took into the next day before I was actually bothering to turn on lights, having gotten used to the darkness, and my first meal was a confused jumble of food that hadn’t spoiled in the heat, haphazardly cooked on a stove that I was surprised to find working.

Then I went camping for a few days. Granted, it was car camping, but it was a lot of fun, and I felt a bit like I had been camping already, so it was an easy transition. I got a bit of a sunburn, I spun quite a bit of fire, tried some fire breathing (very fun), and swam a lot.

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