The Day the Lights Went Out in St. Louis and the Lesser Exile
Summer wouldn't be summer without the obligatory Massive Storm of DOOM!!! hitting at some inconvenient time. For the past three years now I've been in town for "the worst storm anyone's seen in a long time"- two years ago there was the massive hail-pocolypse that totaled the car, last year there was the 70 mph windstorm that sent trees blowing down Olive while I was at Dierbergs, and this year, there was, well, even more wind. Which, of course, knocked out the power. For three days. Which makes it the worst storm I've ever seen (again), and prompted some drastic measures.
The fundamental problem was that this particular storm didn't break the heat wave, and yet there was no airconditioning. Which meant, Wednesday night was spent on the couch downstairs (warmish), Thursday night was spent on a matress in the basement (nice and cool), and by Friday we went to a hotel because by this point, all the food in the refrigerator had spoiled and we couldn't cook anything anyway. Not to mention, without TV or computers and limited light to read by, things got REALLY FRIGGIN' BORING. Everything's back on now, finally, after just under 72 hours out. Food shopping has commenced, I'm back in my room, and I'm mostly through the backlog of email I had to get out.
The fundamental problem with hotel rooms (and why we never go on vacation) is that this sort of situation puts me in close proximity with my brother, who has issues that result in us not being able to communicate without screaming and threatening to inflict massive harm on each other. (I get along fine with everyone else, Girlfriend Situation notwithstanding, so it's obviously his fault, but that's another matter) Solution: read continuously and have Mom and Dad make him do stuff.
(one week interruption in post-writing, no good reason)
The reading in question (started during the outage, finished in the week or so this post has sat abandoned in draft form) is the Harry Potter series. I've seen all the movies, but I hadn't read the books and I figured, might as well get caught up. And so I am, at great expense to everything else I've been doing. There's one in the series yet to be published, and of course, everyone's speculating about what will happen. I figure he's doomed. Enough of his mentor-figures have gotten killed off and he's gotten all isolated and broke up with his girlfriend, which is generally a dead giveaway. But what do I know?
I'm finally running out of stuff to do. The internship winds up this week (very successful, I've seen my performance evaluations), I play on Saturday next week, then Organ Service II (Matins, subject of a later post) the week after that, then nothing whatsoever, than back to Chambana. Not sure what I'll be doing once Boeing lets out. I can't possibly practice all day, and as mentioned, I'm caught up on the reading. Owell. There's a lot to be said for doing nothing.
The fundamental problem was that this particular storm didn't break the heat wave, and yet there was no airconditioning. Which meant, Wednesday night was spent on the couch downstairs (warmish), Thursday night was spent on a matress in the basement (nice and cool), and by Friday we went to a hotel because by this point, all the food in the refrigerator had spoiled and we couldn't cook anything anyway. Not to mention, without TV or computers and limited light to read by, things got REALLY FRIGGIN' BORING. Everything's back on now, finally, after just under 72 hours out. Food shopping has commenced, I'm back in my room, and I'm mostly through the backlog of email I had to get out.
The fundamental problem with hotel rooms (and why we never go on vacation) is that this sort of situation puts me in close proximity with my brother, who has issues that result in us not being able to communicate without screaming and threatening to inflict massive harm on each other. (I get along fine with everyone else, Girlfriend Situation notwithstanding, so it's obviously his fault, but that's another matter) Solution: read continuously and have Mom and Dad make him do stuff.
(one week interruption in post-writing, no good reason)
The reading in question (started during the outage, finished in the week or so this post has sat abandoned in draft form) is the Harry Potter series. I've seen all the movies, but I hadn't read the books and I figured, might as well get caught up. And so I am, at great expense to everything else I've been doing. There's one in the series yet to be published, and of course, everyone's speculating about what will happen. I figure he's doomed. Enough of his mentor-figures have gotten killed off and he's gotten all isolated and broke up with his girlfriend, which is generally a dead giveaway. But what do I know?
I'm finally running out of stuff to do. The internship winds up this week (very successful, I've seen my performance evaluations), I play on Saturday next week, then Organ Service II (Matins, subject of a later post) the week after that, then nothing whatsoever, than back to Chambana. Not sure what I'll be doing once Boeing lets out. I can't possibly practice all day, and as mentioned, I'm caught up on the reading. Owell. There's a lot to be said for doing nothing.
posted by Kevin H | 12:10 PM
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