What’s up party people!?
Things started off rather slow around here this morning.
Right around 9 a.m. our power went out.
This is completely understandable because it’s raining cats and dogs in Ocala today!
Except not really.
Since the desktop computer in my home office was kaput and my laptop battery wasn’t charged, I felt a bit like a sitting duck.
I had some paperwork to do that I was putting off because paperwork is lame, so I took it into the living room, brought up the Pandora app on my phone for some musical entertainment and joined Sadie on the couch.
I think she was surprised to see me! I emerged from the black hole that is my office!
When I first began working from home, Sadie was incredibly needy. She’d paw at my lap and wouldn’t leave me alone until I let her sit on me as I tried to type around her wiggly little body. (I know, I’m a sucker.)
Slowly but surely, she realized that when I walk into our home office, I transform into a blob and the world’s most boring pet owner. As a dog that typically won’t leave my side, Sadie now doesn’t even bother following me when I walk into our home office.
She does occasionally walk into the office, sigh at me and walk out. Sometimes she checks in when she’s feeling particularly antsy and paces around my chair, trying to entice me into a walk or playtime. I think she was happy to have a couch buddy today!
Lunch
The power wasn’t out for too long, so I was able to cram in a few hours of work on the computer before lunchtime.
I made myself a big salad with the following ingredients:
- Chopped romaine lettuce
- Roast beef
- Chickpeas
- Red, green and yellow peppers
- Tomatoes
- Roasted cauliflower
- Asian ginger dressing
I also had a side of cottage cheese topped with half of a sliced apple and cinnamon.
Question of the Afternoon
- Any crazy stories related to power outages out there?
When Ryan and I were first dating, we got caught in the middle of Hurricane Charley in Orlando. My mom called to ask me if I was somewhere safe and no less than 20 minutes later, the power went out and the wind picked up like crazy, knocking trees over and tearing through Orlando. We grabbed flashlights and locked ourselves in the laundry room in his apartment since there were no windows in that room and remained there for hours, playing ridiculous games like “I’m Going Camping” and “20 Questions.” Oddly enough, it was pretty darn fun when it wasn’t scary!
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During the massive power outage back in summer of 2003, my sister and I were in a movie theatre (seeing Pirates of the Caribbean, to be exact). We had to get back home on a lot of major roads, and all of the traffic lights were out–yikes. And then my grandad (who was getting on in years at the time) was nowhere to be found because he’d wandered into town and hadn’t told the nurse aide. Oh, that was a crazy, crazy power outage. Showering by candlelight was nothing compared to the other drama!
Oh fun! I love power outages!! 😉 Haha.
One time I was at ballet and a huge tornado ripped through right by where we were. To say it was scary was an understatement….. but we came out alive (and the building was intact). Whew!
Last summer during that crazy hurricane, our electricity went out for a while. It was fun for the first hour and then as the night went on it was terrible. The worst is how hot it gets in the house. It was quite scary too. I hope to never experience that again!
Guess you’re not winning any Mommy 2012 points by working from home! ;-P
sadly, i think being at home and working instead of playing with sadie sets me back in the race every day.
I love it when the power goes out! So much fun 🙂 I also love hurricanes and tropical storms. I grew up in Houston and one time, we got a whole week off from school for a hurricane that completely missed us. Everyone evacuated, but my family stayed because my Dad volunteered to work at the hospital. I was so excited and then nothing really happened! At least we didn’t get stuck in traffic for days like everyone else who evacuated 🙂
That salad looks amazing! The power at my parents’ house goes out all the time, and the first time they let me stay by myself overnight when I was growing up, I got back home after dark and our power had gone out. Wouldn’t have been a big deal except I’ve never had a house key – we just used the garage door openers or a keypad to get into the garage, and neither of those options work without power! I freaked out for a second thinking that I was locked out of my own house, but luckily I realized that my neighbors had a spare key to our house (at least someone had an actual key!) so I was able to get in.
When the power comes back on- google “Call Me Maybe” business card! I’d copy and paste the link but my iPad is being dumb! Makes me think of your blog post!
You get such good pictures of Sadie! Did she ever go through a period where she didn’t like the camera? I have a young (9 months) golden retriever and all of the sudden she hates the camera! Whenever I take it out she hurredly runs away, so I end up with just a picture of her behind 🙂
do you have a camera with an action mode? that is the ONLY way i can get quality pictures of sadie because she’s always moving or looks away quickly.
Thanks for the tip, I’ll have to try that!
We lost power at school one day this spring and all classes were cancelled! One of the only times I’ve ever been happy about the power being out 🙂
Yum- roasted veg always brings a salad to the awesome level I think!
Hee! During Hurricane Charley, I sat with Fabian and his mom and dad in their walk-in closet. It was awkward.
hurricane charley: bringing EVERYONE together. 🙂
Sorry to hear about your power cut! I always feel so unproductive when the power goes out and it makes me realize how much I rely on electricity!! Lighting nice smelling Bath & Body Works candles is kinda fun though! 🙂 It’s just not so fun when it’s winter here and absolutely freezing!!
Ice storm in 2007 in the Midwest… power was out for a week+ in many locations — a horrible thing when it’s 8 degrees outside. I’m trying to forget that one.
Cute dating story! Love it! 🙂
I remember during some hurricane while I was in college at UF, I had to get ready in the dark. That was fun. Pretty sure I had mascara over half of my forehead. 😉
When I was a freshman in college the power to the entire campus went out for almost 24 hours in the winter. Not only were they only able to provide energy to one of the 4 dining centers on campus, they ran out of food and all the local restaurants were shut down without power as well. The back up generators were also almost out of juice and with no heat in the Chicago winter, they almost had to send everyone to another college campus across town for shelter. Luckily they were able to get it back on in time before resorting to that, but we all crammed into our rooms with coats and hats and took turns watching movies on laptops that had battery left (ok and creating fun drinking games)
Hurricane Ike actually Ohio a few years ago (sans rain). It’s commonly referred to as the “Wind Storm”. It was unlike anything I have ever seen. I had been house sitting for my grandparents and saw what was coming. They were in the W. Virginia area so I called them and said you better find a hotel room because this is CRAZY! I immediately packed up my bag and headed to my parents house. We lost power for 1 day but the people across the street are on a different transformer, they lost power for nearly a week. We eventually connected an extension cord from our house to theirs so they could watch movies on a laptop.
An ice storm also killed our power 2 Winters ago. Not ideal. We ended up taking all of the animals and our Keurig to my grandparents house. You can only go without heat for so long before you start to lose your mind!
I really like the cottage cheese+apple+cinnamon side dish! Simple ingredients put together make for a pretty unique taste…thanks for the idea, I plan to try this one at home soon. (PS – I’m a new follower of your blog, having recently discovered it. Keep the good ideas coming! 🙂
I love apples on top of cottage cheese – especially sauteed apples 🙂 When my family lived in Illinois, there was one summer where the power went out literally 20 times because there were so many storms. My parents actually took us to a hotel once because it got so bad!
I LOVE power outages. We used to live in in historic Coney Island… so we would have the occasional outage (this is back in the early 2000’s). Whenever there was an outage my sisters and I with my dad would walk over to the local ice cream parlor where they gave away HUGE amounts of ice cream. they wanted to get rid of it before it all melted. win-win situation!!!
Oh, the good old days.
During that huge power outage maybe in ’03 or ’04 (where most of the northeastern part of the US was w/out power) we were on our way home from an amusement park and realized as we were leaving that none of the rides were going. We didn’t think too hard about it until we got home (don’t remember any stoplights being out…weird!) When we got back to my parents house, we had the bright idea (actually it was my dad) of going for a drive “to see what’s going on”. Thinking back on that, how dumb was that to do?! It was really creepy seeing streets with no cars, no lights, nothing. People were smarter than us apparently and were staying home to wait it out!
During the big blackout of summer 2003 (hit Ontario, Quebec and parts of NE USA) I was running a conference for more than 100 middle/high school students. We had no power for three days – which meant no electricity, no running water, no means by which to cook food for so many people, and no air conditioning (Toronto in mid-August is quite hot and humid). Thank goodness the delegates were all easy-going and understood the situation was completely out of our control! I think we all cried tears of relief when the power finally came back on.
That blackout definitely turned into one of those “where were you when” moments.
I hate power outages!
I eat cottage cheese with apples and cinnamon all the time. Yum!
A couple of weeks ago, my dad was outside the house for some reason or another at like 10 p.m. and heard the power pole by our house making all sorts of sizzling/sparking/generally not good sounds. He called the power company and they were here within like half an hour to take care of everything, but it did require turning the power off. Maybe not the best power outage story, but definitely a memorable one! We used to lose power during any bad storm (winter or thunder), which was SO obnoxious because when we lose our power we also lose our water. Boo 🙁
My family was staying at a hotel for NYE 2000. Around 8:30 at night when my cousin and I were in the hotel room getting ready for dinner the power went out. It was like the whole Y2K thing some people were worried about actually happened just a couple hours early. Turned out it was actually a drunk driver hitting a power pole near the hotel.
I live in Raincouver so power outages/rain are unfortunately a regular occurance! And aww my dogs are the exact same way as Sadie when I’m working at home! Although they are a little more clingy … I have to take turns with each one in my lap (yes they are too spoiled I know!) 😛
Last April when the tornadoes hit all of Mid to North Alabama, we lost power for a week.
My office was completely shut down, so that part was nice. 🙂 The whole taking cold showers thing… not so nice.
Rnadom question – can you still get sun if you laid out inside the pool screen thingy?
Mmm a sliced apple with cinnamon! One of my favorite snacks. Have you tried the Apple Cinnamon Chobani flavor? I’m having some right now, and ohmygod it tastes just like apple pie! Delicious!
I WANT YOUR POOL!
Last summer we had some pretty scary storms and had to go across town over to my boyfriend’s brother’s house. The power was out, so what better way to occupy our time than play “I’m going camping” while drinking wine?? We thought it was hilarious, they were ready to ring our necks by the time everything cleared up 🙂 haha
We lost power once for a week after an ice storm! We had to stay at my grandparents apartment since they were in an area with power!
Yikes! Sorry about the power outage – I always worry when my power goes out since it normally is out for a couple of hours…oh the joys have having massive trees in the backyard.
Sadie is one smart girl – can’t believe she realizes that when you are in a certain room you are not to be bothered 😉
Last summer our power went out four times over the course of a few weeks. And twice, the power outage lasted days (instead of hours) — I was showering at the gym because our sump pump couldn’t handle it and it wasted a lot of food. Plus it was so scary at night! Fingers crossed its less this year.
In the time before the popularity of cell phones I was once babysitting a family in my neighborhood. The power went out because of a very violent storm. My parents wanted to check to make sure we were all doing okay so they called the house, but I couldn’t find where the corded land line phone was located (it was a very large house). Unbeknownst to me, my dad decided to drive over to the house. When he knocked on the front door in the middle of a loud storm, it pretty much scared the pee out of me!
Hurricane Irene blew through MD this fall and my power was out for nearly two weeks! Luckily my dad lives only a few miles away (and his power wasn’t out), so I basically moved in with him for a few days.
I don’t have a cute power outage story, just the fact that last year our power went out for over a day from a storm and well with small children to take care of that just doesn’t equal fun!
Anyways I LOVE Ginger dressing, one of my favorites, what kind do you like best?
aghhhh charlieeeeeee. such a beast of a storm. i’m almost positive a tornado took a dip in our pool, then popped back into the clouds to land about a mile north of us and cause a bunch of damage to other buildings. it collapsed our pool enclosure directly in the center and ripped part of the awning off so we got some water damage at the sliding glass door (right outside of it was the awning).
anyway, charlie caused us to lose power for TWO WEEKS. we were out of school (senior year of HS!) for that long, and that night, after the initial storm had passed, we all went to home depot and my dad gave a man the thousand yard stare over the VERY LAST generator in like a five-zip code radius. we went home with it 🙂
We are always either out of internet or cable because our dog somehow always find the cords and chew on them! Not cool!
Ugh power outages are the worst!
This is so random . . . but I’m wandering what kind of Roast Beef you like? I have never liked any kind of lunch meat but I kind of want to give it another try. Do you recommend any specific brand? Thank you!
Hurricane Ike hit Houston right when me and my boy-friend started dating ;D Trees were down everywhere and the power was out for week(s). Not going to lie it was a great start to our relationship! We were like woods people except in the city hahah.
I live on the 15th floor and a few months ago, the power went out for over 24 hours…yeah walking up that many stairs wasn’t fun….nor was sitting in the dark with no charged laptop, phone or ipod!!
hey Julie! I have to ask…what is “I’m going camping?” lol.
it’s basically a guessing game… try to figure out the theme/pattern. here’s more info: http://www.ultimatecampresource.com/site/camp-activity/i-m-going-camping.html it’s really fun!
My aunt and uncle took me on a weekend trip to NYC for my high school graduation. We got stranded there because of the NYC Blackout of 2003 — our car was stuck in a garage so we had to stay an extra night. It was surreal!