Briefly...

The Beast and I took Sparky to his week-long camp on Sunday and then drove on to a place where we could get away to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary without the kid. We love him, but three's a crowd sometimes (more frequently when the third is a teen!).

We had a fabulous time. When I can, I'll post photos. Not that we took many.

We arrived back home this afternoon to find that we don't have power. We haven't had power since approximately 10 p.m. last night. Fortunately, the weather has cooled off, so opening windows is a cooling option; it's wreaking havoc with my allergies, however. Oh, well: breathing's over-rated.

Around 6, we tossed in the towel and started emptying the upstairs fridge/freezer. So far we've thrown out about $50 worth of food. The rest is packed into coolers. The downstairs freezer should be ok for tonight at least; if we're still without power tomorrow, I'm going to be throwing away a lot of premade dinners, hamburger patties, stew meat....etc.

We live "in the country," so without electricity we not only lose lights and so forth, but our water pump doesn't work. So, we have no water. No water: no showers. Or...uhm...other plumbing. Good thing I showered this morning! Good thing the library has clean bathrooms!

I'm at the library typing this. Beast had to check work email, so we're here using the wireless network.

Every day's an adventure, right? Beast is off on a business trip tomorrow. I was going to have 2 whole days of Girl Time alone...hah! Oh, well. I'm sure we'll get the power back someday.

UPDATE WEDS a.m.: The power came back on this morning at 7:30. I was already at work, so when I found out (about 9) I raced home to put the frozen food back in the now-functional freezer. The fridge was still warm, though, so I have all the cold stuff on ice. I'll unload those after work. Assuming I don't have to go buy a new appliance.

The other update is that when we left the house last night to come to the library, we didn't bring a house key (because we usually just go in the garage, using the electric garage door opener, etc.). So at 10:45, we were breaking into our dining room window. I'm dismayed at how easy it was to do, but also really grateful that we didn't do any permanent damage to the house in the process.