Baby it's {dark} outside

This past Thursday a few pretty interesting things happened!

Matt took off for a weekend of fun with his guys in Austin, TX where they will be watching BYU vs. Texas Football!  

GOOOOOO COUGS!!!!

Meanwhile, I spent the day bidding adieu to my latest {and greatest} group of international trainees at work.

Little did I know that we San Diegans were in for a strange evening!

Around 3:30pm on Thursday, a worker in Phoenix, AZ removed a piece of something that tripped a power outage for Arizona {which is one of Southern California's major suppliers for power!} That outage overloaded servers that supply electricity out of Baja, CA {Mexico-our other power suppliers}, which then lead to the San Onofre power plant shutting down {which it was supposed to do to avoid a Japan situation in an emergency}.  In all, the outage knocked out power in a region of almost 6 million people in the Southwest, bringing San Diego to a near-standstill and leaving people in the surrounding desert to swelter in late-summer heat.
{source}

WOW...it's HOT out here!

I happened to be TOTALLY unaware of the blackout due to my work scramble to get our trainees ready to fly back to their home countries on Friday morning, and it wasn't until I arrived home that I realized this was more than I had bargained for!

My single-lady night consisted of making sure our perishables and refrigerated medications weren't going to die, then lighting every candle we own and reading nearly half of a book by candle-light before falling asleep {not such a bad night, really!} and when the power came back on promptly at 1:42am, I was promptly awakened by all of the neighbor's alarm clocks chiming in unison, begging to have their time set NOW!

In hindsight, there are a few things that this "dry-run" of a possible emergency made clear.  I am so thankful that our church has urged us to prepare for emergencies through the use of food storage {we are currently all stocked up! Come find us next time there is a blackout}.  I am also thankful that I keep up with our 72-hour kits, and actually think to replenish them {most of the time}.  I am super-grateful that Matt had the forethought to put a flashlight in every. single. drawer. in our home {this was a LIFESAVER!}.  I DID realize that we fall a little short on the lack of car-chargers for our phones, a battery-operated radio, and a cooler to keep our food chilled BUT there's time to catch up on those things!

Last but not least, I hope that Matt is home the next emergency we have.  I was really lonely in the dark!  Well, either that or I need to make better friends with the neighbors so that they will invite me over to light off leftover fireworks and party until 2am when the lights come back on! {Just kidding. sort of.}