The blackout was not too big a deal for me. Annoying and an inconvenience for sure. Without a mechanical means of moving air, like a fan or air conditioner, my apartment quickly takes on the atmospheric properties of Venus or maybe Mercury. Not conducive to continued living. It’s also too dark to read with out artificial light. I suppose I could have fired up the oil lamps or a candle or two…what’s a few more degrees of heat and who needs oxygen anyway? So I did like everyone else did around here.

I went outside.

I actually met some neighbors that have lived here as long as I have and we had never met. Parties were breaking out all up and down the block. It seems the first instinct in this crisis was to drink all the beer in the area before it got warm. Soon the barbecues were firing up, all that food was getting cooked in the refrigerators anyway. Since I do not drink anymore and while chatting with inebriated folks can be entertaining it tends to be one sided, so I went for a walk. All the houses lit by candles probably looked the way it was a hundred years ago(the houses were certainly here then), nice, except for the near constant sound of sirens. And the crack dealer on the corner doing a thriving business. Blackout sale?

Eventually I retired for the night and was in the process of trying to figure out how to make coffee in the morning when the power came back on. Cool. Except very low water pressure. Hmm, given the nature of my OCD(contamination) I wondered about how safe the water was. If the pressure drops, things can go the wrong way and waste water gets into the potable water… sometimes. So I made coffee with bottled water and started listening to news(after making mental note to get batteries for portable radio) not much useful information except for one warning that the major metro area near here was under a boil advisory. I had to call the local water utility and sure enough we are under a boil water advisory until further notice, which at this point is at least another 4 days. They say you need to boil water before drinking, or cooking or using to brush teeth but it is OK for bathing. Excuse me? It is not safe to put in our mouths but it is OK to wash our dishes, hands, clothes, bodies? I mean we are talking sewage here right? How can it be OK to bathe in that? All right I tell myself that is just my OCD talking. But my new friends(those neighbors I just met) have the same questions and they appear more or less normal at least I do not believe them to have the same set of concerns I live with.

Interesting predicament I find myself in. I wash. I wash a lot. My rituals involve washing. and washing of course uses water, water that is now contaminated. Oh what fun. For the time being I can cook with bottled water..washing the dishes using boiled water is a pain but doable. washing my hands, taking showers..much more of a challenge. I suppose I could trust my government and just do it, which I suppose is what most folks are doing. But this is the same authority that hasn’t gotten the word out that we need to boil water. Thank God for Purell. I wash then use that after. Works for hands. Haven’t figured out the shower thing yet. Good thing I don’t get out much, if I don’t figure this out I will be rather hard to be around(atmospherically speaking) in another 4 days.

This is rather a major OCD crisis thing and moves the whole experience way beyond inconvenience, for me.