Ben Franklin Did Not Have My Back

I'm taking a break from the vacation journals tonight to discuss the way that Ben Franklin and his magical electricity let me down in the past 24 hours. I was in Hamilton last night, enjoying the company of my friends A & M(and forcing them to admire my new haircut) when a terrific electrical storm hit. It came with plenty of wind, thunder and lightening; enough to make me delay the trip back home for an extra 45 minutes.

By the time JT and I hit the road to come north, it seemed like the worst was over. But then I arrived in Piscataway and then Dunellen to discover that there was no electricity. Streetlights and signals were out and the night was inky black. Block after block there was no electricity, including my street.

I found a flashlight when JT and I got inside and I read to him by that pale light (it was a brief flashback to last week's camping trip) and then I tucked myself in bed with my flashlight and my cell phone. I was talking to a friend – and enjoying the conversation – when I realized that my phone was nearly dead. What about the home phone, you're saying to yourself.....but my home line is linked to the computer line which doesn't function without electricity so there was no joy there. I reluctantly ended the phone conversation and turned out my flashlight. Bedtime for me.

At 3 am I was suddenly awakened by the sound of all the electrical appliances in my house snapping to life. The a/c, the fridge, the lights over my bed: all of them at once. Nice. So now my heart is racing (and not for any good reason, thank you very much).

Come the morning I got to re-set all of the clocks (except for the radio in the kitchen, which defies me daily by flashing the wrong time). But my electrical troubles were not over.....10 minutes into the sweating, the timer and magical 'calories burned' counter on the eliptical trainer suddenly demanded new batteries. So I stopped the workout and found the batteries. I finished the workout and with just 2 minutes to go before the cool down period, my ipod chose to die. Yeah, that's right, just when I needed some fast paced song to help me out, yet another appliance let me down. The last 14 minutes of the workout were completed in an eerie quiet, while the ipod quietly re-charged itself.

The world of electricity was kinder to me in the afternoon but I remain leery. So let me just note for the record that I have a newfound respect for the many conveniences of electricity.