My Halloween Snow Day

I don’t want to keep you in suspense, so I’ll tell you upfront, I HAVE MY POWER BACK!!!

The previous night, Sunday night, I came home from Mister E’s house to find that I still had no power. Again, with having very little to do, I lit some candles (hey, at least my apartment can smell like Pumpkin Spice while it’s pitch dark) and did a little reading.

(I apologize in advance for the cell phone pictures – I know that they’re terrible quality)

The low that night was supposed to drop down to 27 degrees (Fahrenheit), so I made sure to dress in two layers of pajamas and throw a hoodie on just for good measure. I also had this little guy to snuggle up to and keep me warm (I don’t know which one of us was happier – me being able to use Prince to keep warm, or Prince being allowed under the covers).

I woke up the following morning, Monday morning, to an apartment that was 50 degrees! Brrr! I got myself ready for work as quickly as possible, for once, actually looking forward to going back to the office on a Monday morning.

I figured being at work would be better than sitting in a cold apartment and I could at least use the microwave, coffee machine, and internet there. But as irony would have it, I pulled into a completely empty parking lot at the office – my office building was without power and work had been cancelled.

Not quite sure what to do with myself at that point, I started driving in search of a cup of coffee. I first stopped at the Target with a Starbucks in it by my office.

Unfortunately, Target was running off back-up generators and barely had their store open, let alone had Starbucks up and running. My quest for coffee was turning into a bust. It was kind of eerie being in the store while it was so dark – which I suppose was appropriate given that it was Halloween day.

Oh, and check out this huge pile of snow that was piled in the Target parking lot! If you look closely, you’ll see that shopping cart also ended up in the pile.

After Target, I stopped at a grocery store and several gas stations – all of which were either closed or running on minimum power with no coffee. While driving, I munched on my not-so-appetizing breakfast of granola out of a bag.

I finally found myself waiting outside of Atlanta Bread Company (the same one I ate at here) at 10:30 in the morning. They had a sign on the door saying that they would be opening by lunchtime, so I figured that it was my best bet for finding warm food and internet. After waiting for an hour, the doors finally opened and I was able to get a big bowl of hot tomato and basil soup. Soup has never tasted so good before!

I hung out at Atlanta Bread Company for a while and waited for Mister E to join me for lunch around 12:30. Finally, a little past 1 p.m., I made my way home to find that my power had just been restored!!!!

I was so excited that I did a happy dance all through my living room and bedroom in celebration. I don’t think Prince knew what was going on, but he could tell that it was something good. It was such a sense of relief to have my power back and I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. To let off some steam, I took Prince to the baseball field across to run around and make doggie snow angels. He had a blast!

Upon coming home, I got to work purging my fridge and freezer of all the food that had spoiled during the two days (more on that in another post). After doing a few more chores around the apartment and tidying things up a bit, I started to get to work on my Halloween costume.

Originally, I was planning on going to a Halloween party on Saturday night with a small group of friends, but with the snow storm, we decided to postpone it until Halloween night on Monday. Earlier that day I was thinking that I was going to skip it since I still didn’t have electricity, but since it came back, I felt like I had plenty of time to get ready.

I kind of just winged my costume with items that I could pull out of my own closet and ended up going as a lady from the 40’s. The fur collar that I wore was my grandmother’s as well as the pearl hair comb and pearl necklace. And the pearl bracelets used to be mother’s. I was so happy to get to use items that carried so much meaning for me.

Check out some of the other costumes:

Our friend Kyle dressed up as Kyle from Southpark. And my friend Jennifer (the same one that helped me plan the Pinterest Party) dressed up as the crazy Black Friday Target lady while her boyfriend was a security guard. Oh, and Mister E went as a yuppie (aka, he didn’t dress up). Mister E and I originally had a cute couple costume planned out but with all of the chaos this weekend, we didn’t have enough time to prepare so we decided that we’d save our idea for next year.

Since it was a weeknight, I just nursed a single Pumpkin Ale through the night. I know quite a few people are huge pumpkin beer fans, but I don’t think I see the appeal in them.

For dinner, Jennifer made pumpkin burgers by cutting out jack-o-lantern faces into the cheese. How cute are these?!

    

By the time I made it home at 9:30, my apartment had already warmed up to 64 degrees. Still cold, but a huge improvement over 50!

I know there are still hundreds of thousands of people still without their power, so I feel so fortunate to have gotten mine restored so quickly. I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ve gone through power outages that have lasted up to fourteen days before during hurricane season in Florida, so I’m no stranger to not having electricity. However, going through a power outage in the cold was an entirely new and scary experience. It really made me realize how many of the little things I take for granted in my life.

To anyone out there still without your power, good luck and stay warm!!

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