a quest for POWER

wednesday evening i began a 72 hour quest.  

a quest....

for POWER.

this quest involved several challenges.

challenge number 1 - keep the cool air INSIDE your house for as long as possible.  we managed about 24 hours in the beginning.  about 24 in the end.  the 24 in the middle were shaky.  
challenge number 2 - make it to work on time with only one battery operated alarm clock in the house.  i was a half hour early on friday - i had nothing better to do.
challenge number 3 - find unspoiled food to treat an episode of low blood sugar.  girl scout cookies never go bad and refreeze well.
challenge number 4 - keep animals from over heating.  i caught sandy hanging out under our bed on the hard wood floor.  rolen's kennel is in the basement.  bailey's not the smartest cat in the world.  i have no clue where she was hanging out.  i usually found her on the chair though...
challenge number 5 - survive a night in the basement on an air mattress in the same room as your dog in his kennel.  i didn't sleep - but i survived.  and i only almost flew off the air mattress when jeff rolled over once.
challenge number 6 - survive eating an icky mr. z's frozen pizza at my mom's house for dinner cause it's free and she has power.  remind me not to order those from the next fund raiser - that was a toughie.
challenge number 7 - survive 3 nights without a baseball game.  not hard for me - but jeff almost needed life support.
challenge number 8 - survive the false hope of seeing the ameren webpage say you have power for 5 minutes before refreshing to say "oops - we were wrong."
challenge number 9 - survive 24 hours of seeing that your neighbors across the street have lights, air conditioning, tv's, and stoves while you still have nothing but the dwindling power of a mini mag light.
challenge number 10 - calling ameren ue and actually getting a person on the telephone to tell them that while the online webpage says we have power - you just left there and everyone has power but your block only to later find out that they thought you had power too and left the area.  i do believe some neighbors owe me some cookies cause otherwise we'd still be sitting in the dark.

after 72 hours of struggling to defeat the evil villain named "ameren" - we were triumphant in our quest.  we had found the power.  it was being hidden by something called "tree contact".  the first thing we did - after turning on several light switches and going to the bathroom with light better than a candle - was flick on the baseball game...

where we were really glad to find that we weren't required to play the games sequel - the quest for cable....

enjoy your lights people!  you don't realize how much you miss it until you hit the same switch about 83 times only to feel like an idiot cause you know full well that it won't work - that's why you have the flashlight in your hands dummy!