Dark is beautiful…

Hurricane Sandy came and went. We were lucky…only lost power for 3½ days…

So, breakfast by candlelight was sort of fun, the first day…carrying all the candles upstairs at bedtime wasn't really fun, not even the first night…

A flashlight is a lot more portable, of course, but you have to keep it in your hand to get any real value out of it…I'm not complaining, mind you, just saying…

It's surprising how long the frozen raspberries will stay cold in the freezer, couple days at least.

It's surprising how dark it is at night, with the street lights out, and no "city glow"…..except the last night, absolutely cloudless sky and almost a full moon, that sucker is bright!...outside it looked like the old movies depicting nighttime, you know, the camera guy used some kind of filter so he could shoot in the daytime but sort of make it look like nighttime except for the obvious shadows cast by the sun….or maybe it was a full moon when they did the night shoots….

It's surprising how easy it is to get accustomed to only having "daylight" for illumination indoors, it's less exciting, slows you down a bit, maybe it's a bit more comforting, adequate for most purposes except maybe in the bathroom, I'm sure the pioneers didn't waste any candles during the daytime…

We only turned our cell phones on to actually make a call or check for text messages from family members who were affected by the storm….our in-home wireless network was dead, of course, computers were dark, I didn't even try to figure out how to get someplace where I could check my email, I survived….

Being disconnected from the frantic flow of news was a relief in some ways, anyway most of the news is such low quality that we didn't miss it much, no, correction, we didn't miss it at all…

We slowed down for several days, and wore extra layers, and we refused to complain, and we spent some quality time in front of our gas fireplace, and ate soup, and read books sitting near the window during the day, and by the way, O'Henry comes in handy at times like this….

…and by the way, gin rummy by candlelight is different from the regular game, a bit more relaxed, maybe, certainly cozier, really didn't matter who was winning…

…and talking across the dinner table, in candlelight, is nice too, that was good every night…