Oooh... gather 'round, kids, it's Story Time with Ardith!
Having watched 6 episodes of Trigun, and feeling appropriately sleepy, I went to bed at around 1am last night. Normally, I would have slept until noon this morning, but this was not a normal morning.
I was awakened at around 9:30 by what sounded like a cat screeching. Or, at least it did to my half-awake mind. After lying in bed for a few minutes, I realized it was somebody on the second floor, singing at the top of their lungs with the window open.
Something seemed vaguely wrong about the situation; it finally occurred to me what it was. See, on the average morning, I am unable to hear anything outside my room. I definitely don't hear any over-zealous vocal musicians, and I also am unable to hear the footsteps of people walking on the sidewalk outside.
As that thought seeped slowly into my brain, I realized that the room was quieter than normal. Most would have simply chalked it up to the fact that my roommate had already left for the semester, rolled over, and gone back to sleep. I, however, am not so easily satisfied.
It took nearly half an hour of consistent and analytic thought before I could put my finger on the low noise level inside my room. Once all the pieces fell into place, I sat straight up in my bed, in a somewhat numb state of shock. My computer was not on!
See, I leave my computer on all the time. Part of this is due to me being symbiotically attached to it, and part is due to me not wanting to sit through the boot-up process in the morning. Thus, the low hum of the fans is always in the background. Or is when it is on, anyway.
Being by now somewhat curious, I leaned over to look at my alarm clock to see if the power had gone off during the night. As my alarm clock is most definitely not battery-powered, this is usually a good indicator. And today, it was a better indicator than ever before. See, my alarm clock was not even on.
And thus is was that I learned that the power was off in the entire dorm. I tried to go back to sleep, but some early awakeners from the next dorm came and shouted up to people on the floor above me, having no power in their dorm either, and being quite bored. Annoyed with life in general, I got out of bed, took a shower with the help of a flashlight, ate a not very interesting lunch at SAGA, and tromped off to the computer labs to pour out my angst upon the world.
Because, as luck would have it, the power is not off all across campus. It is merely off in Gilbert and Thomas halls. This, of course, is due to the fact that the construction people simply could not wait another three days before breaking a power line with the backhoe. No, they had to do it the day before graduation and everybody leaves for Christmas Break.
And now I'm going to traipse back to my room and see if they've fixed it yet. With my luck, they won't have, and my room will now have an average temperature of 52 degrees.
Posted by Ardith at December 12, 2003 12:51 PM