So I’m sitting at the computer. Next week’s cartoon is emailed out to all the papers, and I’d been thinking about hopping on the subway and running an errand in the city, but laziness prevails, fortunately enough. The computer starts to flicker and go out, but the backup battery kicks in and starts beeping, and within a few moments, all kinds of various things around the house start beeping and booping. Power to our apartment is always a bit glitchy, so first I’m thinking it’s our building, then I walk outside and see that it seems to be our neighborhood. Then I turn on the battery-powered radio and tune in WCBS, one of the news stations, which is, perversely, running a puff piece about how Nicole Kidman is in town filming a movie. The anchors come back in and mention nonchalantly that there seems to be some sort of scattered power outage throughout the city…tune in another station and they’re reporting that it’s also Detroit, Ontario, Cleveland, etc…memo to WCBS: if you’re going to present yourselves as an all-news station, you might want to jump on these stories a little faster…
Pretty noneventful for us, overall. Spent most of the evening on the roof, to stay cool, and drank enough wine to expedite sleep in a stifling, stuffy apartment. Took the dog out for his last walk of the day, and found a familiar landscape transformed into something strange — needed a flashlight to find my way around the block, as if I were camping in the deep woods. Lot of people out on stoops with candles, lot of people out on the street in front of bars and such…
Our power came back on almost exactly twelve hours later, at about 4:00 a.m., though apparently we’re among the lucky ones — radio is reporting that there’s still a lot of power out throughout the city. Cable modem is down (I’m connecting right now through dialup), as is cable tv, so we’re still a bit cut off from the world. Probably won’t be answering much email til this all gets straightened out.