Wow. I just got power back in my house less than two hours ago, after over 40 hours of blackout. This is going to be one long entry.

Thursday night was pretty cool. I was at Yonge and Dundas when it happened, and I cycled home up Yonge and along Bloor and felt extremely happy about my personal lifestyle choice never to own a car. The insane traffic was of little concern to me and the prospect of making a run to the gas station later and wasting two hours of my life in a line-up for fossil fuel really looked unappealing. I passed three Ferraris, 2 Porsches, a stretch limo and a Rolls Royce at hella speed and viciously savored the sour looks on the driver’s faces. Felt nice to be the fastest moving vehicle on the road for a change. It was sobering to hear so many sirens going off, though.

There were a ridiculous number of people who looked totally lost just wandering along on the street, in the bike path, weaving through traffic on foot. One man was walking right towards my bike and simply would not give way onto the sidewalk, and I’m afraid I couldn’t restrain myself from saying “The hydro is out but happily, sidewalks remain operational, sir”. Kind of bitchy, but satisfying.

When I got home it was hot hot hot so I immediately took off for Futures Bakery to enjoy the patio and people-watch with my roommate and her boyfriend, while waiting for my friends Amy, Marc and Jonathan to show up. Bloor was packed, but we got a table and had what food was available – mashed potatoes and salad.

Amy called and said Jonathan has decided to relocate to the Free Times Cafe on College Street, since there was a gas grill there and we could get real food. He and his friend Meredith had snagged another choice patio seat and the four of us settled in to watch darkness fall . The owner was hawking his wares with some creative marketing that included “Cold Beer to Go! Buy yourself one to walk home with!”, and apparently all bets were off. Since his customers were ignoring the “no drinking in public” rule, he decided to let the “no selling to minors” rule slack and didn’t card one person in the three hours we sat there. I think there were a good number of buzzed sixteen-year-olds out on College that night.

After it got really dark, we decided to relocate and give ourselves a chance to look at the stars – a rare treat in downtown Toronto. We headed along College, holding tea light candles we’d liberated from the Free Times, and headed to the Madison (with beer to go, of course). Along the way we engaged in a little casual civil disobedience and broke into an abandoned streetcar where we sat and drank in the dark until the novelty wore off. We decided 20 points would go to anyone who managed to come back and have sex in the streetcar that night, 25 if the power came back on mid-coitus. A lot less amusing was walking up Spadina, where we saw an emergency vehicle parked outside of an apartment, with three firemen spraying down two children and their parents who were screaming from burns it looked like they had sustained from an accident with candles. Further on I bumped into Christie and Amy waiting for the Bloor bus to take them home (this is circa 10pm) after they’d tried to wait out the blackout at dinner and realized it was crowded bus or walk to the west end.

The Madison was crowded but uninteresting. Seeing a familiar bar by candlelight was neat, but there were a lot of really drunk people out at that point and people-watching had sunk from the high of seeing pedestrians stepping in and helping their fellow citizens by directing traffic to watching people try to get laid because their televisions weren’t working. Sad. At 10:30pm the lights went on, and a huge cheer rang out in the bar. I decided it was time to call it a night, figuring that I would have to go in to work on the Friday, so I traipsed home, only to find my block still draped in darkness. I made it up the stairs with the tealight I’d kept in my purse and passed out in the heat.

Friday morning I set my cell to wake me up at 5:30am so I could go feed the cats at a friend’s house who I was sitting for while she was in Calgary before going in to work. I can’t believe I made it out of the house before quarter to six, getting washed and changed in pitch blackness. I arrived at the house, fed the cats and carried the trash to the curb. Then it hit me. Holy mother. My keys. They’re on the kitchen counter. Inside the locked house. That doesn’t belong to me.

The rest of the day was a hoopla of going in to work only to be sent home, then trying to get the lock picked or drilled on a house I do not own or have any identification stating I am housesitting other than a little yellow note on the kitchen counter with my name on it, telling me what recyclables need to be put on the curb Friday morning. I eventually found a place sketchy enough to do it, but it was almost three in the afternoon, and I was starting to have nightmares about my friend Susan coming home to find the dessicated corpses of her five cats, or worse yet, just one really fat living cat and four furry carcases. Now I can relax and only have nightmares about her coming home to discover her front door key no longer works. Great.

After that debacle, I was kidnapped by my friends Dr. Aly and Dr. Darcy and run off to an air-conditioned palace in Richmond Hill, where I was fed exotic eastern delicacies, offered an apple tobacco hookah, and watched Evil Dead, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness in an energy-sucking midnight-til-dawn overhead-projector home-theatre evening of horror and gluttony. Now I am all set to go see Evil Dead: the Musical at the Tranzac this week. Boo yah.

Today I feel the guilt of missing my friend Marty’s wedding in Guelph. Flagellating myself for my sins, I will clean my room and arrange to have dinner with Alastair tonight. The punishment doesn’t exactly fit the crime, but isn’t 40 hours with no electricity punishment enough?