Power Outage

I arrived home from mass early this afternoon to no power.  I had some beef stroganoff cooking in my new slow-cooker, but I decided to let it sit there for awhile, hoping power would come back on.  I called Toronto Hydro and they had a recording saying that there were multiple outages around the city so I didn't bother reporting ours.

The outage had occurred at noon.  I got home around 1:30 and had a couple of clementines and **cough** some chocolate for lunch.  I curled up under a blanket by the window and read for, oh, 10 mintues before drifting off for a nap.  I awoke at 4:00...still no power and it was starting to get dark. And cold.  I lit the advent wreath that hadn't been disassembled yet and read for an hour. 

It appeared that power was out in a rather small area, about 5 blocks down our street and a few houses in on the cross streeets.  I decided to call Toronto Hydro again and actually report our outage.  After checking my account, they stated that no outage had been identified in my area and they'd get right on it.  

We lit some more candles around the main floor and Z, Alex and I did some math puzzles for a while until we decided to just pop the stroganoff in the fridge and head out to our local sushi joint for supper.  

We got back from dinner around 7:3o.  Still no power.  So we fired up the advent wreath plus a few more candles and played a few rounds of Scattergories by candlelight.  T 8:15 the power came on, and the lads hightailed it to the basement to play Rock Band II that they had bought with some Christmas money yesterday.  They were already experiencing withdrawal symptoms due to the lack of power and had had enough family togetherness, I guess!  This is the longest outage I've experienced, clocking in at 8-1/4 hours.  I know that many people have had to go for days without power during ice storms etc, so I guess we've been lucky.  

Upate (Monday morning):  It would seem that almost a quarter of a million people in Southern Ontario lost power in the high winds yesterday, and that some will be without it for another couple of days.  We got off easy.  We woke up to warmth and a working coffee maker.