If any of you happened to miss me the last couple of days, the following photo explains why I was not able to regale you with my typical tales:



This is what my neighborhood looked like after the massive ice storm that swept through the east coast. Note the ice casings on the power lines. You know what that means? That means no power. At 1 am on Friday I was dragged out of a sound sleep by the beeping of my microwave which only happens when there's a power surge. I got out of bed and went into the kitchen where I started wondering if I had wandered into a rave the way the lights were flashing until finally my house was pitch black. Of course I have never in my life been through an ice storm that was bad enough to kick out the power so I simply went back to sleep, still praying for a snow day from school. I woke up again to my phone ringing at 5 am when the principal called to tell me that there also was a supreme lack of power in the Middle School also, so I did indeed get my snow day. However, it was about this time that I realized it was starting to get awful chilly in my apartment because guess what? No electricity also equals no heat. Being the lazy S.O.B. that I am though, I threw on a sweatshirt and went back to sleep.

Of course by 8:30 when I woke up again, I realized that I had been curled in the fetal position because the temperature had dropped from a balmy 40 something degrees to what I believe most people refer to as "Holy Mother of Penguin Habitat" cold. Yet I still decided to wait it out, assuming my power would be back on by the end of the day, so I got up and started cleaning. It was then that I realized I couldn't make a cup of tea because my stove is electric. I also realized that I had nothing to eat. Everything in the house required cooking of some kind. Then I noticed the one thing that made me decide to get the hell out of Dodge: my cat was shivering.

In five seconds flat I managed to pack everything I thought I would need, shoved my cat in his carrier, and ran outside to dislodge the frozen trees from my equally frozen car. I knew it was going to be a long haul to get to Western Mass but when I turned on NPR radio, I realized it was going to be worse than I expected. Most of the roads I would normally take to get to my parents' house had been closed and National Grid (yes, I hate them even more now) was predicting that the over 290,000 customers without power in Central Mass may not have it restored until Monday night at the very earliest. Monday night? Monday night could lead to me eating my cat raw while warming myself by a fire burning in one of my pasta pans.

Needless to say I made it to Western Mass after a mere two and a half hours on the road, most of which was spent on the back roads of my town, navigating down wires and decimated trees. It was a relief to walk into a house and actually want to take my coat off!