This was supposed to be about my lousy day with no electricity. I know it’s not a proper way to do an entry, but I had it mostly written in my head last night, before I even went to bed. It was going to be so easy.

No electricity means: no computer, no TV, no fax (yay). No radio, satellite or otherwise, and no CD player. No running water, no shaving, no showering, no flushing. No heat. No laundry, no cooking. No garage door opener. No answering machine. No coffee!

The power company had prepared me for it, in the form of a warning letter. And I had prepared myself, as well as I could have. I left the furnace on a little higher setting overnight than usual, so that I wouldn’t be getting up to a cold house with no way to heat it. I filled the water jug I keep in the bathroom, in case I had to flush by hand. I briefly considered eating all the ice cream in the refrigerator before it melted, but I talked myself out of that one.

And then, because it rained all morning, the outage didn’t happen. I was left with no excuse not to work, and the Boss made sure I had plenty to do. I made my coffee, and I even made it out to my morning errands as usual. It was kind of a letdown, to have such a routine day after all the anticipation. It was even a bit of a disappointment that I didn’t have anything to complain about.

But of course I did find things to complain about. The rain, for one. And the fact that the garbage company had left my trash can on its side in the mud, and had left the lid of my recycle container wide open to collect rain all day. And the fact that when I waded out through the mud to get my mail this afternoon, I found a note in my box from the carrier. “Sorry we missed you,” it said.

You can imagine how this made me feel, having been home all day. Now I have to find the office where they’re keeping my package. I dragged the trash containers back in from the curb and slammed them into the garage. After carefully emptying the rain water out of them, of course.