Snow Days Are Way Better Than Ice Days

So it's the third day where working from home is not only acceptable but necessary because of the sheet of ice that is currently blanketing Dallas. Normally I would love this...working in pajamas, bad daytime television, sipping a cup of coffee, fireplace on...and I did love it the first day. Until Texas decided it needed to force rolling blackouts.

I woke up on Thursday morning and realized that the electricity was off. I texted a few coworkers to see if theirs was out as well, and they told me that there were rolling blackouts and they should last about 15 minutes each. No big deal, right? So I went back to sleep and waited for the electricity to return. And it did, about an hour later. Not exactly the 15 minutes I was promised, but livable. I got up, made some oatmeal and the chai tea I posted, and went to work. About an hour later, the lights went out again, but this time they were back up in about 20 minutes. I figured they'd worked all the kinks out and now were on the right schedule. In another hour, at about 11AM, they shut it off again. I still had some battery on my laptop, so I continued typing my January reflections post, thinking I'd be all ready to post it by the time the lights came back on...but they never did.

I kept waiting and waiting, but an hour passed, and then two hours...and still nothing. I called the electric company to report the outage. I went through all my junk mail that had been piling up. I played some minesweeper on my computer until the battery ran out. I didn't have heat or any way to cook since everything in the apartment is electric. Thank goodness for the gas fireplace, I spent the day sitting on the hearth trying to keep myself busy.

Around 2PM I started getting really hungry and began calling takeout places to get some delivery food. I called for nearly two hours and probably 30 places, and only found one that would deliver to me...and they had a two hour wait. I ordered up a pizza and sat down by the fireplace again, anxiously awaiting the delivery man's arrival.

Once I had my meal, I felt much better, and I tried calling the electric company again. I got a message that they had stopped taking calls, so they didn't have anyone I could speak to who could give me an estimated restore time. I talked to a few people on the phone, then realized that I should probably conserve my battery life and not play Angry Birds until the phone died.

I tried to reheat some of my pizza over the fireplace on a splatter cover and had that for dinner. It was pretty much the most ridiculous thing I've ever done. At that point, I decided it was time to make some decisions, because there was no way I could stay there through the night without heat. The wind chill was at 4 degrees.

I called my mom's friend and she agreed to let me stay at her place, but I had to find a way to get there since my car was stuck in the garage. I found a cab company who agreed to take me, and what should have been a 15 minute drive took about 45 minutes. You could ice skate on the streets; it was just a solid sheet. At 10PM, people were still having wrecks. I couldn't believe anyone was driving anywhere in this.

Yes, that sheet of ice is the street. 

Finally, I made it to her house, had a quick snack and a shower, and fell asleep. So glad I made it over here, because I called the office at my apartment and they said the electricity is still out and won't be fixed before 7PM tonight. I hope everyone else in the building had somewhere to go, because it looks like it could be this way for a while.

Stay warm everyone!