Ice Ice Baby

Interesting day. I'm glad I didn't live 150 years ago.

6.5 hours without electricity. I was nearly finished wiping tables after breakfast at the Derb when all the lights turned on and off rapidly, like something in an old-school music video. Then they shut down. I stayed late and helped set up for lunch, getting all the paperware out since the dish machine was obviously down. The boys had to carry ice up in giant plastic bags because the elevator couldn't work. None of the pop or juice machines would function, we had to put ice cubes into the salad bar to keep everything cold, and hot dogs and hamburgers were unavoidably off the menu for F line. Fortunately a lot of the refrigerators and several of the fluorescent lights in the kitchen run on a generator, so the cooks could still see. There was also butane to cook food at Willie Wok, but it got really crowded or they got low on butane, so they shut it down by the time I ate at 11:15. We ate in the dark, but no one seemed to really mind. Our drink choices were limited to 2% milk, water, or Gatorade. (Or tea until it ran out and there was no way to brew more.)

I couldn't connect to the Internet and didn't want to risk running the battery down on my computer since I didn't know how long it would take to fix the electricity, so I shut it down. I called my mom, my dad, and Erica, and then Lacie before text-messaging my friend Jessica and heading to Smurthwaite for an afternoon of studying Spanish. They have a fireplace, and it was toasty warm. Also, my room was getting awfully dark and I didn't want to sit in the dark alone. I heard numbers of about 10,000 people in Riley County without power. My dad said a lot of people are still without it around the state so they are setting up shelters. Some people I know in Manhattan still don't have it because the power lines around their house are down. For three seconds while I was studying, all the lights came back on before shutting off again.

We're supposed to have more icy rain/wintry mix throughout the night. Campus was shut down today. People who were scheduled to have finals today have to take them on Saturday, so the dorms will be open an extra day. Fortunately my final today was canceled, so I just have to work breakfast tomorrow, study for my music final, take my music final, study for my Spanish final, take my Spanish final Thursday night...and then I'm done! I'm pretty excited. I haven't even thought about packing yet. I'm not sure when I'll be able to go chip my car out from beneath the ice. I saw a lot of the cars outside of Haymaker had huge icicles hanging from them. Hopefully it'll warm up. My weather forecast says 37 and sunny for Thursday; hopefully it'll all melt off my car.

I think the Derb is still having problems. I was going to go down for dinner....Dashers isn't open, and it looked like they were closing E & F lines. So you have residents from four halls trying to get through two lines in 90 minutes. I didn't want to stand in line. And the dining room would have been packed...and you know, I was by myself and I'd feel like a loser looking for a place to sit. So...I'll take a shower and crawl into bed. I'm really tired from working at 6am and running around getting things set up at the Derb, plus an afternoon of studying Spanish. That'll put me to sleep any day. I'll have to set the alarm on my phone tonight just in case the power goes out again. I wish they'd just give us the grades we have in class right now or make the finals optional if people need the points.

Hmm...tomorrow is my last shift of the semester. I'm pretty excited. I don't know what we're having because the website is down, but I'll be hungry. I scraped what I could out of the bottom of a jar of peanut butter for "dinner." I'll make some tea (now that I have a working microwave to heat it up) and that should help.
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I could go for something sweet...like Reese's Pieces or Riesens. Mmm...that would be wonderful.