Pasticus' Present Volume 1: The Blackout...

That's right, I'm gonna whine about my fucking weekend. And you're gonna sit there, laugh a little, cry a little, and by the end, you will marvel at this tale of the triumph of the human spirit. You got it ?

So, the weekend was going along quite nicely, except for living in Satan's ballsack, of course. We had gone to the park with the twins in the morning, and they had eaten lunch and gone down for a nap.
About halfway through their nap, the sky started turning dark. We didn't think much of it, but just as the girls started waking up, the rain started. It was around 3 p.m. It was really storming: raining HEAVY and windy and shit(shit being the North Jersey term for thunder and lightning, of course). The girls were fascinated, and a bit frightened by the shit(see previous parentheses). The storm threw a wrench into the plan to go to the pool, but that was no big deal.

Then, the power went out. then it came right back on. Then it went back on again. then it went out. Then, it went back on again. then, it went back out. And stayed out.

I got on the phone with the power company, and was of course quickly attended to with grace and kindness.
Sorry, I was dreaming there for a minute. I got on the phone with the electric company, and it went something like this:

They go through the whole "we're closed but we'll help you if we have to thing", and then the questions start(this is all automated, by the way)
Them: Are you calling to report an electrical outage at your home or business ? If so, press 1.

I press one.

Them: Please give us the 7 digit telephone number at the location of the outage.

I enter my phone number.

Them: Do you know the exact cause of the outage, such as a downed power line or a broken transformer ?

Me: No.

Them: Okay, it would really help if we knew the cause of the outage. Do you know the exact reason for the outage ?( Remember, this is a RECORDING doing this to me)

Me: NO.

Them: okay, we need to gather the information about the location of the outage. Please give me the zip code.

Me: 32301.

Them: Okay, now we have the city and state information. Now we need the street address.

An aside here- Huh ? I am calling the power company for the city I am living in. How do you not already KNOW the city and state information ?

I give them my street address.

Them: I heard ------ -------. is that correct ?

Me: No.

Them: please give me the address again.

I do, and they get it right, but they spell out my street. How weird is that ? The recording says: "Okay, we have 123..hold on, let me spell this part..." and then proceeds to spell out my street name. Little bit odd, I think.

Then they ask for my apartment number, and then they say that there is no info on the outage, they will investigate, and if I want to speak to someone, I can say "representative" and someone will talk to me.

You may be wondering why I remember this recording so well ? I heard/spoke with it no less than 5 times over the weekend.

45 minutes and about 60 recordings of "Due to high call volume, our wait time is longer than usual. You can continue to hold, or try your call again later." later, someone answers the phone. To tell me that they are working on it, but they don't have am estimated time yet for the power to be back.

Great. By this time, we have decided to go to McDonald's for dinner,as we have an electric stove, so we cannot cook anything for dinner. thankfully, the rain has cooled the air slightly, so it feels like we're in Satan's armpit, rather than his nutsack.

We head to McDonald's order our food, and go to pay with a check card when Chuckles decides to tell us that the card machine doesn't work. Well, we don't have any cash, so thanks for nothing. And you might want to put up a sign telling people that the card swipe doesn't work, so you can save yourself some valuable button pushing time there, Chuckles. And you can shove your attitude("well, I guess we can stop putting together those Happy Meals now") up your polyester suited ass, you cow bitch.

We find a cash machine, and head to Burger King(better burgers anyway). That actually goes well.We then kill some time at Petco. the girls like watching the animals. We got to watch some ferrets fight, and looked at some fish. Good times. Good times.

I'll save you the rest of the evening's activities,( I kicked My Special Lady's ass at Trivial Pursuit, by the way. And may have gotten lucky afterward, if you know what I mean- Wink, wink. I mean we had sex. Had you guessed that ? You had ? Damn !! I though perhaps I was too subtle. I'm sorry, I ruined the moment there, didn't I ? Aw, Hellfuck !!!) And we will skip ahead to 5:30 a.m. I wake up and we still do not have power. I call the power company again(and by the way, 5:30 a.m. is THE TIME to call the power company) and I get someone who ACTUALLY knows what's going on. He tells me that they have had a crew at our location since midnight(which of course means that the people we talked to at 4 p.m and approximately 8 p.m. were LIARS) and that they should have us up in a few hours. Wow, a real answer. Fan-fucking-tastic!

Alas, it was not meant to be. True, the crew as there,and true, they had power restored somewhere around 9 a.m- to everyone but US! Well, not just us, but there were about 4 buildings in our complex that still didn't have power. And it was another 2 hours before they got our power back.

Apparently, they didn't realize that they had not fixed our power, and when one of our neighbors FINALLY got through, he was told that "They would not come out for just one or two people " Huh ? So we all had to call and wait 45 minutes to get through to let them know that there were several apartments without power, so that it was worth their time.

Of course, it came on, then went out again, but it was back on again about a half an hour later. Until it rained again around 6:45, then the power went out again. This time was only about an hour, though. All of which I spent on hold with the power company.

But we survived. Isn't your heart soaring due to this tale of triumph over adversity ? Don't you think we're heroes ?