Power outage

waking up in a winter snowland (view from one of my living room skylights)

Last night during the snow storm, I was watching tv around midnight and all of a sudden........ silence and darkness. No more tv, no more light, no more computer screen showing me the usual picture slide show, no sound, .... No electricity in the area. Also the streets were in utter darkness.

I couldn't see a thing in my appartment and it's funny how quickly you loose orientation in the dark. I know perfectly what is where in the room but yet it is a challenge to move smoothly in the darkness. Usually there is a bit of the streetlights peaking in, or under a door from the next door room. Now I found myself bumping into my table and my big bar chairs in attempt to get into the kitchen to get my lightner. Then with the lightner I found my mobile phone and this way I got to my bedroom where I could take my flash light (with of course fainting light, those batteries always start dying on me when I need them). After 10 minutes only I realised that opening my curtains did bring in a little light inside since the snow was reflecting the moonlight.

Without the possibility to do anything anymore, I went to bed in the hope to wake up a couple of hours later with the electricity back on. I couldn't help myself though for running in my head some disaster scenario's where the electricity did not turn back up in the first day. It's so scary to imagine waking up without heating and a snow blizzard outside (and you can't leave the appartment because there is at least a meter snow outside your door of course), without warm water to shower or to cook food, with a slowly (slow because there is no heating in the house) defrosting freezer full of food, without a clock, music, telephone, computer or tv, .... I really didn't feel at ease last night. I know, my thoughts were quite melodramatic but still. You know that we've become so dependent on electricity but it's only during a power outage that you feel so helpless. There is really nothing you can do anymore.
the advantage was that there was no risk that my neighbours would play loud music at night either :p. Well they haven't done that in ages so it's ok, but it did give me some ideas on action, the next time they do that....hihi the main electricity switch of each floor is in the entrance hall.

Anyway after a couple of hours I did woke up and my alarm clock projected the time again. It actually projected the correct time to me which is still a mysterie because I don't remember putting back-up batteries in it. So how can it calculate the true time if it's been out for a couple of hours?? Hmm, going to check that thing out.
Maybe it's just as mysterious as the little "thin client" computers we have on the project for the users. those little things don't have a real hard drive since they only connect to a big server on which all programs and files are stored. Well we shut those things down after giving training, but then (not always) after 1-2- ... hours, all of a sudden they start up again. They just start booting up without anybody touching them. When they do that, it's usually not just one of them, but a group of them. Quite strange when that happens. The IT helpdesk thinks we are fooling them, but we are not. oh well except for waisting electricity it's not really harmfull.

At this moment, some parts of the country are still getting snow showers, causing a lot of accidents on the road. So I didn't drive to Leuven to help Jan working in the house. Sorry about that! there are still area's without electricity, so my fear of being without it for a long time wasn't so exaggerated after all. Yikes.