Life without electricity...

Really sucks! We are now pushing 72 hours with no power at our SoCo casa. Everything in the fridge is shot. But with the uncomfortable temperatures in the house, we cannot bring ourselves to do a fridge clean out. I imagine we'll do one later tonight to get all the rotten food out for trash pick up in the morning. I pray that this clean up happens with cold air blowing on me.

Feeding ourselves has certainly been a challenge. We actually had friends over Sunday evening, but things worked out on the grill. I had already made a nice cous cous salad (that luckily is served room temperature) and we combined that with some happy beef and pork sausages that were thrown on the grill with some lovely yellow squash from our neighbor's garden. And the beer stayed cool enough to keep everyone happy.

After that, things started to get dicey. We ate our remaining eggs and more sausage on Monday morning, but after that we had misgivings on what else to eat. To get some work done during the day we camped out at the bar at 8407 (which is where we did work on Tues, and where we are right now), but it's not the best place to actually be productive. But we were able to commandeer an electrical outlet all to ourselves, which is more than we could accomplish at Panera. That however is offset by a higher tab at 8407 than Panera. But extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. And Pedro, Nancy and staff have been extremely accommodating, so we very much appreciate that.

For dinner Monday we rolled the dice and cooked some ground pork we had in the freezer. Earlier in the day I threw an 8 pound bag of ice in the freezer so I figured that would help keep some of the items in decent shape for a few hours longer. It seemed to work OK. I did a nice dish using my peppers from the garden - stuffing them with the pork and onions (cooked on the gas stove). I gave it an Asian twist adding fish sauce, Asian spices and soy sauce to mixture. I then threw all that on the grill to cook and served it over some jasmine rice. All things considered I felt pretty good about the dinner. And eating it al fresco wasn't all that bad. We certainly didn't want to go back into the kitchen since it heated up even more with my cooking.

And as you know, we woke up Tuesday still with no power. Another restless night of sleep (or lack thereof) and another few hours at 8407. But our frustration, sleep deprivation and irritation levels were continuing to rise so our productivity certainly suffered.

The evening called for dulling our senses. So we hit Olazzo for their $5 martini night and dinner. Was nice just to chill in there for 2+ hours and try to regain some of our civility back. We milked the AC as long as we could and then took in a couple more hours of AC at the AFI - saw the Kids are All Right, good movie. And even though the temp outside was quite nice, inside the house upon our return was still uncomfortable.

Three nights straight without a good night's sleep. Not good for us. I know readers who have raised kids will have little sympathy for us on the lack of sleep, but this is something we were not used to.

Now, back at 8407 hoping that when we return home the gods from PEPCO will have finally smiled on us. Though I'm not holding my breath.