I Typed This Last Night

It is now Friday, June 24, 2005, 10:11 PM local time. I am sitting in the dark hotel room, as the hotel has apparently lost power. Let me amend that: looking outside, it seems as if a significant portion of Chicago has lost power. I am using my laptop’s batteries. This is probably due to the heat, and the overwhelming use of air conditioning. There is a fire truck outside the hotel, in front of the convention center, with its lights flashing. I hear people banging around somewhere in the hotel, and I can only assume that these are guests here, going up the stairs. Not a minor thing, considering that I am on the seventeenth floor of the hotel, and I’m not even near the top. I wonder if they won’t have a nasty surprise waiting for them when they reach their rooms, since the keys to get into their rooms are electronic.

The annoying thing is that just as the lights went out, I was on the ALA website, planning my itinerary. OK, that isn’t completely true: I was actually in the Little Bill’s room, taking advantage of the wonders of modern plumbing. Which is not a terribly convenient place to find yourself during a blackout.

Now there’s a hotel employee knocking on all the doors, asking, “Do you need anything?” Nope, not right now, fella!

I’m just glad that my cell phone is fully charged, and has an alarm. I’ve already set two alarms, just to be on the safe side. Although as of right now, I’m not entirely certain what it is that I am going to be waking up for.

Blackouts tend to make me skittish, especially after the power failure a couple summers ago. That was a miserable weekend, to say the least. The only happy thoughts I have of that incident are:

a) Walking through Bicentennial Park with my mom and the dogs, and stopping to watch the Indian men play cricket on the baseball field, and
b) Being able to see the stars. Not all of them, but a lot more than usual.

This blackout is much more local, so no stars in the sky tonight. And I may be wrong, but I doubt that much cricket is being played nearby. Although I do see the lights of the stadium on over to the southwest of us.

And then this morning we had no water to shower with, so I'm getting a rather late start.