~Monday~ I woke up to a deafening quiet. The sound machine wasn’t running. The LED clock was completely out. What about that 9-volt battery in it for back-up?
I had no idea what time it was until I turned on my phone to see 9:39, and I had no idea how long my power had been out. It wasn’t starting to get cold in the house or anything, so I guessed not that long. Have I mentioned in the last ten minutes this weather being a pure-t nuisance and inconvenience?
I called the gym to make sure that 1) they were open, and 2) they had power. “Yes and yes,” they said.
Before heading out, I grabbed a banana to eat, not wanting to open the refrigerator to keep things in there as cold as possible, and I wrote out a couple more holiday cards that I wanted to mail with a stop by the post office on the way to the gym. I also packed a towel in order to shower at the gym, as well as some after-workout clothes to change into, since I wasn’t sure how much hot water I’d have at home, or how hot it would still get.
At the post office, I learned, as expected, that most of my cards required additional postage, to the tune of:
Let me ask you this. Does that blue, ram stamp go with my holiday evergreen stamps?
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I’ll answer that for you. “No.” Okay, maybe, with a huge, huge stretch, it goes with that one in the upper right—in terms of color perhaps, but certainly not the subject matter. Okay, maybe with a huge, huger stretch, “The ox and ram kept time, pa-rum-pa-pum-pum.” It absolutely doesn’t go with my holiday return address labels. Annoying.
What else was annoying was that the postal clerk made some joking comment like, “You’re not mailing Christmas cards today, are you?”
To which I of course said, “Well, I tried to mail them on Friday, which was not listed as a postal holiday, but you were closed.”
“We were open until noon,” he said.
“Well, I came at 1:30,” and I didn’t know you closed at noon. It wasn’t noted on the USPS website that you were closing early.”
“Well, some of our branches were open later. The Westgate location was open until 3:00.”
I thought two things: 1) “That’s out in BFE,” and 2) “Was that little tidbit just supposed to beam into my head standing in front of your locked doors at 1:30 on Friday?” How about a little signage telling the customers the location of the closest branch still open, or open the latest?
Oh my god; I’m losing my mind. I’m actually expecting the US Postal Service to think of the customer.
Right before I left the house, I swung my left leg up on the closed toilet seat in the bathroom by my front door to tie my shoe, and my back snapped. “Oh fuck. Not good timing for this.”
However, at the gym I stretched and went ahead and did, surprisingly pretty much without any pain, my 300 ab crunches. I followed that with 40 minutes on the elliptical with intermittent very high steps—as I always do my cardio workout on the elliptical machine’s “Hill” setting—with no back pain. Thank goodness.
After a shower, I decided to stop by home on the way to Cup A Joe Mission Valley to: 1) Eat a quick lunch to save some money, and 2) See if, by chance, my power had come back on.
It hadn’t, so after a quick ham sandwich and some of the leftover marinated vegetable salad my sister had made for Christmas, I headed down to Cup A Joe to use their free Internet access. I also took four homemade ginger snaps with me, and sitting not far from the sign on the wall that said, “Don’t eat it in here if you didn’t buy it in here,” I snuck bites of them along with sips of their coffee. Contraband and coffee. Good combo!
While I was there, Steve checked in by Blackberry Messenger to let me know that he and Stephen and Ben and Dale had ordered some flowers for Joe’s dad, and just as I received that, Joe checked in by phone. His dad’s visitation will be on Wednesday, his funeral on Thursday, and his updated obituary is now online. I ordered a spray of flowers from Robert and me via ftd.com.
I tried to renew my library book from there, which would have made my second renewal, but it said there were people waiting for it, so I couldn’t renew it. Great, just when I was getting into it, and while I have time to read it, I have to give it up tomorrow. I got back in the queue for another copy, landing at number 42 in line.
I checked in with the power company for an update on my power outage. In the process, I stored the phone number to report an outage in my phone for next time. The lady I reached told me that my power was scheduled to be restored no later than 5 PM today. (It was about 3:30 at the time.)
“Would you like a call-back when it’s restored?” she asked.
My phone rang at about 4:15 and it was “the computer” letting me know that it was back on. Love technology when it works and makes life easier.
I spent most of the night reading The Help knowing that I have to give it up tomorrow. Yes, I’m definitely into it enough now to finish reading it when another copy becomes available. Hopefully it won’t be too long, so I don’t forget who the characters are and what’s happened so far.
I may just use that Quail Ridge Book Store gift card I have and go buy it tomorrow or in the next couple of days.