Perfecting the Shadow Puppet

Dearest blog followers,

Sunday night we lost power. Monday work started at noon and ended at 4:30. Tuesday my car swam to work and then got redirected on my way home because all the streets were flooded. (I resorted to back streets and got lost because there were trees down across the road.) Wednesday I got ready for work at the gym so I could shower with more than a flashlight's worth of visibility. Perhaps you think, ahh tropical storm, no big thing? Here are the headlines from the paper:

• Huracán Irene en Puerto Rico deja al menos un muerto y mil 500 damnificados (Translation: Huracan Irene in Puerto Rico leaves at least one dead and 500 damned)
• El paso de "Irene" por Puerto Rico provoca perdidas de 70 millones de dolares (Translation: Irene's passing through Puerto Rico provokes losses of $70,000,000)
• 1 million lose power in Puerto Rico as Hurricane Irene heads towards US
  

Somehow, though, PR culture sneaks in and turns this into a party. That would be why I spent hours last night at my neighbor's place hanging out in candlelight with people from the apartment. It was a glamorous shin-dig focused mainly on eating the food that would otherwise rot in our refrigerators and gossiping about PR government/apartment dwellers/famous people. Brilliant.

Work also increased in social exchanges, as everyone is curious to catch up on who has lights and running water. PLUS people stop by constantly to ask how I survived the storm (Let's be serious - I got all the "scared" out of my system with the non-existent storm Emily... I SLEPT through Irene's 60 mile an hour winds!). Overall, it's been an amusing change of pace and routine, but I am sooooooo glad the lights are back on!!!

Here was my drive to work on Tuesday morning (note, this is 48hrs+ after the storm):