The Weekend of My Discontent

It all started innocently enough on Saturday in Connecticut. We went to Summer's first birthday party which featured shrimp (I must have had about eight -- teen of em, man), buffalo wings, pepperoni a lot of candy and a lot of kids. Chase hid in the corner and played cars the whole time, with occassional breaks to throw balloons.

After driving through a torrential downpour for two hours we decided soup from the kosher deli (it's open on Saturdays, not glatt) was a good idea for dinner. It was a little after 6pm. As soon as I got inside and placed my order (two quarts chicken noodle, one mushroom barley) and the lights went out. After a few moments of hysteria by the assembled Jews the guy got me my soup and I paid in cash. But one neurotic Jew didn’t have sufficient cash to pay for her meal. When it was suggested she should write her credit card number down and they would run it through the machine when the power returned, she said “I’m not comfortable with that.” So she had to write down her name address and phone number and promise to come back the next day to settle her debt.

As the girl at the counter was trying to add and subtract in the dark she gave me incorrect change, not realizing I gave her $25 instead of $40. I thought my act of kindness in turning down $15 of incorrect change would have bought me some good karma, but that was not the case.

When we arrived home power was out, we lit some candles and found some flashlights and actually did ok. Mrs. Poop left for work at 10, and I watched UFC 109 (huge backlog of UFC PPVs). I saw the Serra knockout but since the Dan Miller-Damien Maia fight was so boring I fell asleep in the middle. That killed the remaining laptop battery (blackberry died too) and I still don’t know who won that fight.



Chase and I woke up at 7am (new time) and first thing he did was ask if he could watch a show. When I explained “no power, no lights, no show” he seemed to get it, and no freak-out. But after we’d eaten breakfast and confronted the whole day with no power, we decided to turn tail and run for Staten Island. When we got back with our Chinese food from Peking Taste (best chicken with cashews this side of Guangdong), Mrs. Poop was awake, and the lights were still out.

A tuckered out Chase napped until 6, I napped until 8. During those extra two hours Mrs. Poop tried to make the best of it by sharing a candlelight dinner with Chase, then playing “I Spy” with the flashlight.

A little after 9 I was about to step in the shower when I heard cheering on the streets, similar to what I assume my Canadian cousins heard when Sidney Crosby scored to beat the Americans. I flicked the light switch and relieved the great Biblical moment when God said “let there be light.” I even turned on the light in Chase’s room to tell him our nightmare was over.

All in all it could have been a lot worse but I am pissed about a few things:

1) I didn’t watch any college basketball games on Saturday or Sunday

2) I also didn’t watch a single recorded program this weekend, which could lead to DVR-mageddon this week especially with the NCAA Tournament threatening to consume me for 20 hours this weekend

3) Several programs I wanted to watch including the Selection Show and The Amazing Race are lost and gone forever

4) It was cold, about 60 degrees in the house for two days

5) Our house smelled like a combination of root beer and grapefruit from the scented candles we were burning