Christmas without Lights

Yes, it's true. The power went out here on christmas day for about 3 hours. Put dinner on hold for that time. The scalloped potatoes (homemade ones, thank you very much) were about to go into the oven as was the small slab o'ham (did I mention I LOVE The Girl Friend?) for heating, the green beans were defrosted and ready for the pan along with butter and almonds when POOF. All went dark and the daily hums that we associated with modern life went silent.

Have you ever noticed that when you have no electricity everything you think of to do requires power? Laundry, oops. Vacuum the rug, nope. Check ebay for that awesome deal you've been obsessively tracking, no go. Watch tv, yeah right. Work on the jigsaw puzzle, hah! (Unless you are uniquely gifted or have immense amounts of patience, don't get one of the photo mosaic beauties - been working on this one, Tigger if you must know, for WEEKS!)

After lighting candles around the house a bit, The Girl Friend played on her mactop, because hers has a working battery, unlike mine. I sat beside her on the couch winding tangled yarn (thanks Wyatt). It actually had a sweet feel to it.

That morning was a bit melancholy around here as GF was missing her family and friends and all the adrenal that usually surrounds christmas day. We had already bought and set up our mutual solstice/christmas gift, the combo vcr/dvd player for our bedroom and we had decided we would do chanukah gifts starting that night, I just couldn't stand to see her be so blue. A few weeks ago she had picked out a solitaire computer game thingy for her mactop as a gift (which was fine as it was on my list to get for her) - she and I are addicted to such things, but the poor thing has been suffering with some demo crap forever! I snuck into the bedroom closet and rescued the gift, tiptoed upstairs and quickly wrapped it. With total aplomb (yeah right) I sat back down on the couch and said, "Every kid should have a new toy on christmas morning" and handed her the present.

So while there was no power, The GF was in her glory able to play endless variations of solitaire. It's really fun version in that it arbitrarily runs animation of silly things across the screen while you play. She is enjoying it greatly and I am so happy.

Finally the lights did come back on and dinner was served, albeit about 3 hours later than intended, but still with candles on the table. It was sweet.