Monday, September 15, 2008

Apocalypse Now

So there I was, trying to get some sleep before my shift at the ETC tonight and I'm woke up by a loud BOOM ( along with my whole house shaking). Turns out it was a tree falling on my roof. I wandered clumsily into my living room to find the house without power and under the siege of a vicious windstorm. Trees, toys, you name it, were all flying around 'Dorothy in the tornado' style and all hell was breaking loose. At least, that's what it looked like. Ominous was as close a description as I could manage and even that didn't totally hit on the feeling one got when viewing the chaos. So we packed up the kids, the dog, and an overnight bag and hightailed it to my parents house where power and cable were still intact. The kids and the husband are camping there tonight and who knows what we'll do tomorrow. According to the paper about 200,000 are without power and the powers that be are estimating it will be 2-3 days before everyone's power is restored. To give testimony to my level of concern... I dusted off both of my wheels and placed the travel wheel snugly in her padded carrying case and had my husband put Anya in our room away from any windows. I'm not losing two of my favorite toys just because Ike wants to throw his weight around. The real shocker was when I came into work. Driving the ten miles or so to the south campus was like driving through a post-apocalyptic movie set. No lights anywhere except for car headlights and few candles burning in houses here and there. It's a complete blackout. The hospital is on emergency generator power. Most of the computers are down. The lab looks like a CDC war zone and we are filled to the brim with patients. The odd thing is I just watched the movie Doomsday this afternoon. By the way, if your contemplating rentign it....don't. What a waste of an hour and a half. Every other word was f**k and the plot was along the lines of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (waaaaay beyond Thunderdome) meets Wrath of the Ring Wraiths. Basically it's your killer virus, '28 Days Later' esque, post-apocalyptic horror flick. Add in a little medieval flair just for the hell of it and place it in my beloved Scotland (the origin of the virus is Glasgow and they turn the whole of Scotland into a quarantined hot zone which kind of offends me though I don't know why). If you haven't seen it yet, wait until it comes out on cable, otherwise don't waste your money. It's okay for a bit of a "B" movie night. Right now I'm just wondering if I'll be able to get back to my house in the morning and whether the power will be back on. The hell of it is, I just went and bought some groceries yesterday when I got off work.

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