sdblackout2011.

on thursday, jon and i were hanging out at home. he had gotten home from work early at about 3:30 so that we could go to an appointment at 4:30. he was upstairs changing, and i was downstairs sitting in the front room. suddenly, all the lights turned off and i heard the air conditioner shutting down. i didn't think much of it...the power has gone out a few times in my life, and it usually turns back on in less than an hour. i went out front to see if anyone else's power went off and a girl from the next complex over said hers was out. i thought that was weird because our houses aren't connected......so then i started texting a few of my friends and their power had gone out too! they live off base, about 15 minutes away. that's a pretty big area to have no power....but what surprised me even more was when hannah text me and told me her power had gone off as well....in YUMA. uhhh, yikes. we knew that we should probably leave for our appointment early, since all the street lights wouldn't be working. we left the house at 4. twenty minutes later, and about two miles down the main road, we realized there was no way we were going to make it on time. so we took a left turn and got back on base. 

 the marines had everything set up. they were directing traffic and keeping people calm. however, this toolbag made us U-turn at this light to take us off base again. we told him we just needed to get home, and he said we needed to go back off base and drive the two miles we had just driven and come back in through the main gate. we were not about to do that. so instead, we parked our car at the barracks and walked home. 

 this is why he wouldn't let us turn left. the traffic trying to get off base was ridiculous. i was feeling so sad for the marines that live far away. it probably took them hours to get home. it was awesome that the power went out right during rush hour too...

the power outage was actually kind of fun.
the house was SO hot, but we had no obligations or anywhere to be. 

jon decided that he needed to dress up to protect us from the zombie apocalypse. that isn't a real gun............................

the house was dark even before the sun went down, so jon and i sat on the back patio and i did homework. we didn't have anything else do to once the sun went away entirely. we drove around base for a bit. it was really creepy because we couldn't see anything and alarms were going off in all the buildings! we also went on a walk. the stars were so beautiful, and it was almost a full moon. that was the best part about the blackout. we saw more stars than you can ever see here. 

we came back and tried to get to bed early but it was way too hot in our bedroom. they told us we needed to preserve our water, so we couldn't take a cold shower. jon had a good idea.....he wanted to sneak into our neighborhood pool. it closed on labor day, but it's still filled with water. the military policemen had better things to do then check the base pools, so we ran over there, hopped the fence and swam for a few minutes. it was so serene and the water was a perfect temperature. it was kind of scary though... i wish we wouldn't have watched so many scary movies last weekend right before the blackout. my imagination was going crazy. i am certain there were creatures swimming in the pool with us undetected.

i am pretty proud of our emergency preparedness. we had two large flats of water, and lots of flashlights and candles. it turned out to be a fun night in. another bonus: they cancelled school for everyone on friday so i got a random day off!

the black out was a result of someone in yuma doing a routine maintenance check up and messing up. all of san diego county, some of orange county, mexico and arizona was out of power. it was estimated that roughly 3 million people were in the dark!!!!!!!! they weren't sure how long it was going to last. luckily, our power turned on about 12 hours after it had gone out.

it was the funniest today in church when a man stood up and told us he was here visiting from arizona. he said his family has been here a week and they are leaving tomorrow and he's just "getting used to san diego's electrical system." you should have heard what happened next. the entire classroom erupted with laughter. never have i ever heard a group of people laugh harder than that, especially in church. ( fyi. i was laughing the hardest / loudest.)