Ok there was a black out. I didn't even mention it. Well I did but nobody ever saw it because I never published what I wrote. The reason being it was just a list of words. In fact let me show you what is was.

black out
work, nina, Cassie, custodians, blackout, franks, foot rub, home, Cassie's dad, car service, Benedict, jenny's, nick, franks, home, roof, sarah from cali, music (fisher spooner, cowboy bebop), Mike and Jason with sticks and crowbar, school yard, fire, firemen in fire, jason and nina, waking up too much, delayed trip to airport, canceled flight, trip home, friend in china town, car dying
Trigun dvd set - import

That's how most of my posts start. I get a bunch of ideas, write them down and then try to write something about them. Lets see if I can take that mess of words and write something about them. If I leave something out the mention of it was enough.

Ok there was a black out. The lights, the appliances, the traffic lights, the air conditioners, everything went off. I've never seen so many people with the clueless "I can't watch TV so I don't know what to do." look on their faces. The event started with me asking for a custodian so I could find out if I could work on the second floor that friday. (They waxed every floor after I had finished setting up the computers. Of course this involved messing most of them up. I had to go back to fix them all. - To be fair I had help most of the time.) The custodians wouldn't answer their radios. We tried twice and then the lighting shifted to emergency lights.

Nina had showed up about an hour before hand. She was helping me and Cassie with the computers. She didn't show up to help us. She showed up to hang out with me and Cassie and later possibly go hang out with Steff.

So the power was out. We walked to my home (Frank's) where Frank was listening to his cranking powered radio. I'd like to point out that if we were even in a need for a radio that didn't need batteries and we couldn't get batteries, I think we'd be in a bigger mess. The radio stations (who have backup generators I guess) knew nothing but we listened to them guess a bit.

Nina who is a foot rub glutton managed to get the three of us rubbing each others feet. We hung out at franks until it was dark outside and inside too. Walked around a bit. We met up with my neighbor Benedict and eventually walked down to my friend Jenny's house. Cassie's dad after much... lets just say he's not a nice guy but eventually came and picked Cassie up at Frank's house and drove off. He gives me the willies.

Ohh and it took a little looking but there wasn't a car service around that was open. No power for the radios. But I heard that if you freelanced you could have pulled in quite a few dollars. (Without the subways working a lot of people were trying to get around on foot.) But if you were out of gas you were out of luck. Apparently gas pumps are electric powered. (I was low on gas - I also don't trust people, nor do I want them in my car.)

Me, Nina, Nick and my mother ended up meeting on the roof of my parents apartment building with a few other families. We all listened to the radio for a while, talked, played the guitar, watched the stars (its not often that we see stars in NYC) and listened to music.

Music =)
Let me first start by introducing you to Sarah. I don't know much about her but she's from California and a cousin or niece of someone in the building. That and she has a good taste in music. (By this point my good friends Jason and Mike showed up. Jason wielding a crowbar and Mike a wooden sword (big stick). They had gone on "patrol" earlier that day and went looking for me. It wasn't until late that night on the roof did we meet up.) Fischerspooner started the music. They're a weird group but I like them. Sarah also had the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack. I like that very much. I like the bluesy stuff more then the swing stuff (her vice versa) but everything on that cd was good. I had a good time.

We eventually all left the roof and hung out in local playground. People didn't bother to go home and to sleep that night. I was conflicted, I liked the feeling of people everywhere it sort of gave a sense of community. On the other hand there was a lot of large groups of people who all had their heads on a little tight because they didn't know the people in the other groups of large people. Or even worse, they did. We did see one sorta fight break out, but I'll be dammed if I know what was going on.

We were dropping off some people back at my apartment building when we smelled smoke. We all started off running down the street and were soon joined by others. Lots of sirens could be heard, a fire-truck drove past us. We got to 6th ave and the street was blocked by cops. We walked past them (Jason hiding his crowbar) and found an apartment building ablaze about 3/4's the way down the block. Fire was blowing out of the front door as the fire fighters approached and kicked what was left in. This is the second time I've watched fire fighters walk face first into flames. Its breath taking.

I heard someone standing near us crying. Another person (brave, stupid, lucky who knows) was comforting her saying that nobody was inside, that he had been into each and every one of the rooms and everyone had gotten out. It was weird to think that he had just been in the flames him self, just another ordinary guy.

Nina, Jason, and I got sick of the smoke and left for franks (with the intention of meeting up with Mike and Sara later but that never happened) we talked for a while (Nina and Jason got along rather well) and eventually (I think it was around 4 am) we went to sleep. I couldn't sleep very well. I ended up waking up like 4 times that night. Didn't sleep to well.

That morning I drove my mother to the airport. While we drove threw the still powerless neighborhoods we saw restraints holding barbecues, block parties, and a a corn field (apparently its always been there - not caused from the black out). And amazingly all the other drivers on the road were civil. Driving wasn't how to get from one place to another as fast as possible it was how to keep everyone happy around you so you could get from point A to point B with out crashing. It was quite refreshing. Unfortunately cell towers weren't working yet so I missed the call that my mothers flight had been canceled. We drove one of her friends home to china town (odd because she wasn't chinese, and the flight was to china) and then back to our house. Where my car promptly died. (Needed a new battery.)

Ok that's enough that was my 24 hours of the black out. If you want to see some satellite photos of the east coast read on. Ohh and the day wasn't a total bust, I got back power around 7 AM and I got my Trigun Box Set witch looks bootleg to me but might be from Hong Kong. Either way it was cheep and has all the episodes. I watched that and was happy.

-Francis

More!
I got these photos from some link on Slashdot.

This is twenty hours before the lights went out.

This is seven hours after.