I’m ashamed; I’ve been online all evening, ever since I got home from my good-paying American job. I’ve been checking email, writing friends, making airline reservations for my vacation coming up, buying books, copying code for my website, and all the while, I’m recording my favorite programs on TV.

Then everything goes black. Mind you, I live in the north Georgia mountains, so there are no street lights to illuminate my house. Mad? Hell yeah! Home phone (plugged into the wall) is dead – cell phone, thankfully, had a full charge. I immediately began calling the electric company to report the outage, and truthfully to bitch about it. Why, it has interrupted my life!

Yes, I got the typical “all circuits are busy” recording, but continued to call as if it would make the repair come faster. On the 8th call, I got the “we realize there’s an outage in your area, and it will be repaired as soon as possible” recording. I was thinking, “What can I do to speed this up? This is going to take forever!… DAMNIT!” I was trying to find a flashlight to navigate my way around the house, and I’m mad as hell. How dare the electric company let an outage happen while I’m writing for my blog!? What an absolute inconvenience! Now I know I have to reset the clocks, the microwave, the VCR, and every damn thing else that keeps time with the flow of electricity.