In which there is a killer, a strange device, and a change of plans
Victor and I are master procrastinators. The two of us probably shouldn’t be allowed in a relationship together, because two procrastinators are definitely less productive than one procrastinator alone. Last night, we were packing for our New Year’s trip to London, but both of us decided we needed to take a break from packing, even though it was getting late.

So I was doing the Washington Post Crossword online, while Victor was happily playing our new obsession, Katamari Damacy when the power went out. It flickered for a second and then went pitch black. Me being the person I am, I immediately started listening for the killer who had cut our power off so that he could steal into our apartment and knife us to death. Apparently, this thought never occurred to Victor, which just goes to show you that we are different people indeed.

The living room still had a little light thanks to the battery in Victor’s laptop, so he was able to find the flashlight. We located some matches and lit some candles, and then Victor started investigating. The rest of our neighborhood had power. The house next to us had power. But all of the apartments in our fourplex were completely dark. We could hear our neighbors in the apartment below us. The other two couples didn’t appear to be home. While Victor was checking things out, I heard a weird alarm going off. I figured this was a device that alerted you when the power went out. My parents have one at their house, because they had turkey houses and needed to know if the power went off at night so that they could go turn the generator on for the turkeys. I wondered if the device I heard was going to somehow alert our landlady, who lives in Garland, that our fourplex was out of power. Do such things exist for the part-time landlord? Anyway, it later turned out to be Victor’s new phone that was making the noise; I had never heard his ringtone before.

We sat around for a while in the dark, waiting for the power to come back on. We decided to wait a few minutes more to call our landlady. We started discussing what to pack for our trip (including what to wear to the club night we wanted to go to). Eventually, we started doubting our decision to go to London at all… since it would be a considerable expense, and we are trying to stick to a tighter budget. We did London for New Year’s last year anyway. We eventually came around to the decision to spend that money on a trip later on, maybe to Dublin or something, and go to Austin for New Year’s instead. Yes, we talked ourselves out of a cheap (comparatively) trip to London. We are silly.

The lights eventually came back on. I reset my alarm clock and went to sleep. When I woke this morning, it was 8:30am, also known as when I am supposed to be at work! I called my supervisor, jumped in the shower, and was out of the house in 25 minutes. Note to self: when setting the clock at 11:45pm, make sure you’re not actually setting it for 11:45am.

So now we’re going to our friend Nevie’s party on Saturday night. I’m really looking forward to a quieter weekend, especially in case I have a relapse of the Terrible Kidney Pain of 2005. It will also be great to see some of our long-lost friends.

So yeah, never a dull moment around our house.