Power
The power went out today during a storm. The estimate from the power company for the length of the outage was four hours.
I did what any sensible person would do: I walked to the nearest functioning grocery store and bought batteries and potato chips. Oh, and tortilla chips, because if this outage was going to last, I needed lots of snacks.
My apartment, when the power is off, is very, very dark. There are two little patio windows in the living area, and one sizable window in what I use as the TV room.
That's it, and when it's dark and stormy, it's pretty damn dark.
I couldn't drive out of the parking garage, either. No power going to the gate.
I remembered very quickly that without power, the world's very small. Once your phone is out of juice, there's no way to contact anyone who isn't physically near you. There's no Internet to see what's going on in the world. Once you run out of gas, there's no more gas, because gas pumps need electricity to work (so do charging stations).
So many of the things that make us a wider society (for better or worse) depend on electricity. They enable our lives to extend beyond our neighborhoods.
Without it, the world seems so tiny.
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