Space Invaders

Thursday night, at about 10:40 p.m., Adrian and I were only 10 minutes away from the end of our TiVo'd season finale of So You Think You Can Dance. The announcement had just been made that Danny and Sabra were the last two dancers left in the competition. Such an exciting turn of events considering I've been rooting for Sabra to win these past few weeks.

Then the electricity went out.

FWOMP. We're sitting in total darkness.

The power outage did not come as a total shock. Some pretty horrific storms had been wreaking havoc over the city for most of the night, and we live in an area prone to outages. Just the timing was baaaaaad. It was also a typical RVA in August and hot as blue blazes.

Fortunately, my parents still had electricity and the next day, when we were still without juice and air conditioning, they invited Little A and I to spend the day at their house. As the day wore on, temperatures rose, and our house turned into a furnace, they extended the offer to an overnight for Little A so he could sleep in relative comfort. Adrian finally broke down and bought a generator so we wouldn't lose too much food from the fridge, a lesson we learned in the aftermath of Hurricane Isabell. We could also run a few fans and lights making our life a little less Little House on the Prairie.

After dropping Little A off, we hoofed it out to catch a showing of the Bourne Ultimatum. Sold out. The only other movie in the same time slot was The Invasion. While I was entertained by the movie and sufficiently creeped out in by the pod people, the political "subtext" was less than subtle and the science added too much pat explanation and ruined the jittery atmosphere.

Still, it was not the type of movie to see when your street is cloaked in pitch black. I only realized this while alone in kitchen doing the dishes by candlelight. Adrian had gone out to get gas for the generator, the roaring of which outside the kitchen window was drowning out all other sounds. Dishrag in hand, I turned to look out into the gaping black maw of my front door when it dawned on me that there was only a screen door between me and what ever lurked outside eager to attack. And with the din of the generator, I wouldn't hear it creeping up on me from behind as I washed my cereal bowl. Scared me enough to make me almost pee myself. Then I kept my paring knife handy.

Obviously, our electricity has been restored (as of 5:20 this evening), and today's temperatures were much milder and more tolerable sans AC. Despite the generator's assistance, our yummy Popsicles and my Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches were rendered un-salvageable.

And now, along with preparing for the zombie apocalypse, I am now practicing my emotionless pod person face so I can fool the alien invaders.