Lights! Camera!... Wait, no electricity?!

My weekend has been interesting to say the least. On Thursday of last week, a tree fell across my driveway taking powerlines, phone lines and whatever other kind of lines with it. I was sitting on my couch when it happened. I heard this cracking noise and felt the thunderous thud as the tree hit the ground. At first, I thought it had hit the apartment because the sound seemed so close. Somehow, though, we were much luckier. The tree missed my car and the other tenant's car that was parked in our horseshoe-shaped driveway. I park on the top left side of the horseshoe and the tree fell behind my car but did not hit it. The powerlines that fell blocked me in as they laid across the top of the horseshoe-shape. I went outside to survey the damage. When I went back inside to check if I had power, I seemed to only have power in my kitchen.

By the next morning, the electric company had turned me off completely because the damage was extensive and needed to be fixed by a contractor before they would turn the power back on. Friday morning I had to go to work so I got up the guts to try and get out of the driveway. There was no getting through the tree so I decided to try to go under the powerlines. I was pretty sure they were not live and praying that I was correct in that assumption. After a 6-point turn to get out of my parking space without hitting the tree, I slowly creeped towards the fallen powerlines. The lines slowly slid over the hood of my car but got caught on the luggage rack. I happened to have an empty water bottle in the car. I put the transmission into park and pushed the lines onto the luggage rack, moved over to the passenger seat, pushed the lines up and then got back into the driver's seat. Slowly, ever so slowly, I drove under the powerlines. Once I was free from danger, I jumped out of my car and did a little celebration dance.

And today is Monday and I still have no electricity. I do have to say though that I think I have taken some of the fastest showers ever this weekend. At first, I was hoping that somehow, against all odds, I would have at least lukewarm water in my hot water heater to last the weekend. But no. By Saturday, the water was lukewarm. And this morning, freakin' cold is the only description that comes to mind. But my landlord promises that I will have electricity by today. Even after living in Africa without electricity, cold showers are still a little hard to get used to.