Getting back to good

NOTE: WITH LOSS OF POWER FOR MORE THAN TWO WEEKS AND NO PHONE LINE OR COMPUTER ACCESS, BLOGS WRITTEN THROUGH THE PITTSBURGH MOVE WERE BY HAND AND WILL BE ENTERED AS TIME ALLOWS. PLEASE STAY TUNED!

Tonight I can write by streetlight. It's a little sobering, so I'm having a beer. A cold one. :)

Bob got power back. I can stop worrying about running out of clothes for work and making the mark when I sit on the toilet. Bob said that a cheer went up throughout the neighborhood when the lights came on. I wish I had been there for it. Four days with no lights, that must have felt good.

There's still no power at my house. When I stopped by before work, my landlord and his team of helpers had just finished covering the roof with an old tarp and plastic sheeting. A friend of mine who is visiting Sarasota snagged a new tarp for us.

While I was home, they ripped up the carpet. My bedroom is now a concrete slab covered in random notches and patterns of glue.

My guess is it's a lot harder to put down carpet than to tear it out: They were done in less than 10 minutes.

And the smell went with it.

As I was driving over to Bob's house after work, I noticed that many more places had electricity; there were many more lights on in the distance. On the highway, I didn't feel like I was about to drive off a cliff.

I smelled a burning smell, and wondered if it was from electricity coursing through tattered lines, or my car. My check engine light has been on since the storm. Closer to Bob's I was convinced I smelled McDonald's. A cheeseburger to be exact. I started to wonder why my brain was convincing me a world without power somehow smelled that way, like a burger with too much sugar. Surely not a single restaurant was operational yet.

When I got to Bob's I found that a bottle of Worcestershire sauce that I salvaged from my house had spilled in the back seat. That was the cheeseburger smell. I wonder if FEMA would pay for such a stain-related injury to my car.

The world is getting back to normal again. It's a good thing in most ways.

I might be able to make my deadline for starting work in Pittsburgh, but I think I'd be less stressed if I pushed it back a week. Right now my current paper is publishing from another office, and that is chaos in itself, forget finding gas and water and chocolate milk.

Next week things should be closer to normal as we regain power one by one. It's funny, as each of my coworkers slams down and phone and exclaims they have power: A hearty cheer goes up, as if he or she had climbed a phone pole and fashioned the repair single-handedly.

I hope life returns to normal before I move. Even if it's just for a day or two. I think I really need it to be grounded in the reality of what is going on with me. And I need to remember the fondness I have for the place rather than feeling grateful to escape.