I woke up on Friday morning for spinning class. It was raining out, and I debated going back to bed. I figured I would get up and look outside to determine whether it was safe. Since things looked okay, I drove to class without thinking too much about it. It was raining out, and there were a heavy puddles along the way. One person who was in the class commented that her alarm didn't go off because of the power outage. The rest of us were surprised. What power outage? We had no idea.

In fact it wasn't until I drove back from the gym that I heard on the radio that schools were being closed and that there were major power outages. It was actually raining hard enough to make me uncomfortable driving. That's pretty rare for me, but it left me relieved that school was cancelled. I later saw on TV that a state of emergency had been declared for MA. The Big Giraffe has many colleagues who live in Northern Massachusetts and New Hampshire who had no power, heat, or (worst of all) internet. I hadn't realized how bad things were closer to home until today, when calls started to come in from local friends who didn't or in many cases still don't have heat or electricity. We have offered to let people we know stay with us, and we also had one very nice couple call us assuming we didn't have electricity and ask if we would like to stay with them. We went to a mall on Friday night and it was jam packed. In hindsight, we realized the crowds were there probably because people were looking for a place to stay warm.

Today we went to a birthday party at one of those kids' birthday party places. The kids had a fantastic time. Many of the parents did not seem as upbeat. As we chatted, we learned that we were the only people there who had electricity! Worse, none of them were expecting to get power back until Monday.

A. Elliot's Lesson Learned: New England storms affect the whole region.