A Canadian in America...

Wow, what an adventure!

So there was a horrible storm that ripped through Chicago on Thursday. It tore down trees and power lines, and left our apartment building and surrounding area (essentially most of Mt. Prospect) without any electricity. For four days. You'd think that being in the modern times we are in that we wouldn't have to be without frickin' electricity for FOUR DAYS!!!!!!! You should just be able to damn well fix it!!!! So, we sat in the dark on Thursday, and then went to Eric's parents' house for Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. Our power came on sometime after 9:30 on Sunday night. Crazy!
We had a couple of bad things happen though. Eric's car decided to break down in the middle of above mentioned horrible storm, and I had to come and rescue him. The roads were horrible....flooded and tree strewn. And crowded. It took me almost an hour to get to where he was, and then we had to jump his car three times to get it home, having to push the car off the road and across the train tracks one time, to get it out of traffic and into a position in which we could jump it again. And then once we got home, it looked like a tornado had passed through our neighborhood, and we were all of a sudden renters of lake front property! And, of course, we were in the dark. Not only had Eric's car died, but his phone died too!!! Sigh. And no power to charge it. Mine was running low, too!!!! So Friday we had to drive around in the morning, during awful traffic due to all the traffic lights being out, to try and find somewhere with power to look at his car. Then we had to try and find out if we had to go to work. I eventually decided not to go to work because I couldn't get ahold of anybody to see if our store had lost power! So, after dropping Eric's car off, he dropped me off at the apartment where I had no car, no phone and no electricity. All I had were my own two legs, a Nintendo DS (for a short time, until that died) and a book of sudoku puzzles!!! So I paced for awhile, walked down to the gas station and made a couple phone calls on the pay phone, and wandered around surveying the damage and trying to see if ANYWHERE had any power. It didn't appear so. It was a long 10 hours until Eric returned!
It was very sad on Saturday when I had to start throwing food away from our fridge and freezer. Luckily we didn't have THAT much, and we managed to actually get some of our meat to Eric's parents' freezer, but still, about 6 grocery bags was thrown away. So sad!
Sunday we went to Six Flags Great America theme park. That was fun. Not so fun though while waiting in line for two hours, getting to the front of the line and then the ride breaking down. Electricity blip through the park.....but eventually we got on the ride, and it was sort of fun. (Eric wouldn't leave the line. I just wanted to go home but NOOOOOO, we were waiting until the end of time to get onto this ride!!!) So that's my story. At least the ride didn't break down while WE were on it!!!!!
Do I have anything else to update? Not really, I suppose. All my babies are getting sick, so that's probably why I don't feel so hot today. They're all either vomiting, or getting fevers.......sigh. Here's some pictures from our neighbourhood.......







The pictures don't really give it justice. It was bad.....

posted by Jo @ Wednesday, August 29, 2007